Calling Dr. Heimlich – a study in Wolfpack basketball

If you think blown leads and huge deficits don’t anger fans then you haven’t been following the Pack this season. Just take a look at the fiascoes over the past couple of weeks if you don’t believe me. I don’t know about some of you but it sure does feel like State teams coached by Gottfried give up a lot of leads. I actually mentioned this during a post game discussion earlier in the season and a commenter said prove it, stop being anecdotal. Well after the Notre Dame Choke job I decided it’s high time I dig deeper, find the facts and see if this feeling is accurate. Without further ado let’s get started.

The first thing I had to do was decide, how much constitutes a “lead”? I decided to put a “Lead” at 10 points. Anything less than double digits doesn’t seem insurmountable during the course of a game. So I looked at all games where the lead stretched out to 10 points by either team. Then I decided not to look at games where the losing team didn’t make a legitimate case of overcoming the lead, so I decided the lead had to go from at least 10 points down to 3 points or less (1 possession away from tying the game). This eliminates all games where (1) the lead never stretched to 10 points and (2) the lead stretched to 10 points but the losing team never reduced the lead to one possession. First let’s look at NC State “blowing a lead”:

If you’d like to see the times when the leads were built and when they were erased click here

As you can see blowing leads has happened quite a few times in the 3.5 years Mark Gottfried has been coaching the Wolfpack, 18 times to be precise, 28 if you count allowing a team to come back to within 1 possession. As you can see in the table they have a record of 6-12 (.333) when they completely lose a 10 point (or more) lead. In the 131 games Gottfried has coached at NC State (through the GT game) his teams have “Blown A Lead” 14% of the time, 21% of the time they’ve allowed a team to come back to within 1 possession.

Here are the total number of games each season the Pack was either up or down by 10 or more points first:

Over 1/2 of the games the Pack will get a 10 point or greater lead first while 1/4 of their games they will fall behind by 10 or more points first. The remaining 25% of games will be so close no one will take a lead greater than 9 points.

If you compare only the times the Pack has been up by 10pts or more and lost the lead to just the games they were up by that amount (not the 131 games under Gottfried) then the blown leads increases to 24%. That’s almost 1 out of ever 4 games the Pack will get at least a 10 point lead and then completely blow it. If you add in the down to 1 possession it happens 38% of the time, over 1 out of every 3 times. I don’t know about you guys but neither of those numbers look good to me.

The biggest blown lead happened at Duke in 11/12 where the Pack had a 20 point lead with 11 minutes remaining and over the next 9 minutes gave it completely away and lost the game. Numbers 2 and 3 on the list happened this season against FSU and Notre Dame respectively. While State was able to walk away with a victory against FSU they couldn’t against Notre Dame. I hope this helps some people see why so many fans are as upset over that loss as they have been.

You can see it doesn’t matter where it’s happened: Home (2-4), Away (3-7), Neutral (1-1), it’s happening and they are more likely to lose the game away from Raleigh when it does happen. It happens against BIG SCHOOLS, little schools, and everyone in between. The thing is it happens. Look all teams make a run, that’s basketball; it’s how you handle it that separates the good programs from the Bubblicious ones. Frankly though this is maddening the way Gottfried’s State teams can be so good yet so bad at the same time. Yes we are looking at this in a vacuum, I don’t know how other coaches have done in this time period and I don’t know how MG did back at Alabama but this does appear on the surface to happen and happen often enough to be of concern.

Now that we’ve looked at the bad news let’s flip the coin and see the good…Comebacks.

EDIT: The comeback against Texas was at neutral site and will fix later.

If you’d like to see the times when the leads were built and when they were erased click here

The 2 things that jump out to me are (1) Comebacks don’t happen very often and (2) it almost always at home. The Pack has only come completely back in 9 games (7-2) with another 6 games where they got it to within 1 possession but couldn’t close the deal. As I said it almost always happens at home (4-1) and only twice at an opponent’s place. Gottfried’s teams at State are twice as likely to blow a lead as they are to come from behind.

If you compare only the times the Pack has been down by 10pts or more and came back for the win to just the games they were down by that amount it’s 26%. So 1 out of ever 4 games the Pack is down by 10 or more points they will overcome it. If you add in the down to 1 possession it happens 43% of the time, almost half the time but it won’t be on the road.

The biggest comeback was at a neutral site (IZOD Center, East Rutherford, NJ) against Ricky Barnes and his Texas Longhorns when the Pack was down 18 with just under 12 minutes left in the game and in just 5.5 minutes State erased that lead and eventually won. The second biggest comeback that resulted in a win was this season against Louisiana Tech. As you can see most of these games are against bigger named schools but there are a few in the list that shouldn’t ever happen.

I’d love to know how other coaches are doing to get a good comparison on how Gottfried compares to others but that’s just not going to happen. We’ll just have to settle for knowing Gottfried has the ability to coach his teams well enough to get leads in over half their games but struggle to hold on to it. Imagine the difference in record and NCAA Tournament seeding State would have if they could just cut those blown leads in half?? This is all just food for thought the next time you’re watching the Pack and the lead stretches out to 10 or more points for one team and you’re considering the likely outcome of the game.

About 1.21 Jigawatts

Class of '98, Mechanical Engineer, State fan since arriving on campus and it's been a painful ride ever since. I live by the Law of NC State Fandom, "For every Elation there is an equal and opposite Frustration."

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Viewing 8 posts - 26 through 33 (of 33 total)
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  • #72858
    1.21 Jigawatts
    Keymaster

    <div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>pakfanistan wrote:</div>
    If somebody can tell me where this data is coming from, I might be able to whip something up to compare coaches. No promises though.

    I’d like to know this, myself.

    You guys are going to see just how crazy I was in getting this information.

    Go to Stat Sheet for NC State basketball, then the boxscore for each game, look at the game flow to find the points of the game. If you want to check the times for better accuracy go to play-by-play to verify the times. Then you just go game by game, season by season.

    #72860
    wufpup76
    Keymaster

    ^Wow … truly, hats off to you.

    #72863
    Wulfpack
    Participant

    I very much appreciate all the work that goes into this. Amazing that we are giving up all of these leads. We really are the epitome of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde.

    #72864
    Heelh8r
    Participant

    My take from this info is that we have been a mid-tier team, capable of beating anyone and capable of losing to anyone also. Therefore, it is natural that we would lose more leads than the teams above us. And the teams below us are less likely to ever get as many big leads. The difference in the elite teams is that they are able to more often win the close games and close the gaps when they get behind. That is a HUGE next step and it is not easy to get there. Only one team gets to win each game and for us to start closing the deal on the leaders, it means they have to start losing those games. Those guys are ranked and have won a lot of games for a reason, and we are trying to take that spot away from them. We have moved from near the bottom 4-5 years ago to mid-high in the conference, but to get into that top 1-5 is a lot harder to do.

    We face the same dilemma in football. I am as excited as anyone about our improvement, but to get leads on FSU and Clemson and then be able to hold onto those leads is another HUGE step. Can we do that? We can only hope.

    #72884
    pakfanistan
    Participant

    ys are going to see just how crazy I was in getting this information.

    Go to Stat Sheet for NC State basketball, then the boxscore for each game, look at the game flow to find the points of the game. If you want to check the times for better accuracy go to play-by-play to verify the times. Then you just go game by game, season by season.

    Ugh. I was afraid that was the answer. I still might be able to do something.

    #72931
    Tau837
    Participant

    When State gets a 10+ point lead, 38% of the time the game is later narrowed to a one-possession game and 24% of the time State loses.
    When State falls into a 10+ point hole, 43% of the time the game is later narrowed to a one-possession game and 26% of the time State wins.

    Right?

    So my takeaway is that we are not any better or worse at holding big leads than our opponents. There are more total comebacks against State than vice versa, of course, because (fortunately) we’re up big more than we’re down big.

    Thanks for putting this together.

    Really good teams win more close games than they lose, hold onto a lead once they have it, come back from a cold shooting streak, etc.

    Note that State does not meet this definition of “really good”.

    I also feel, that any game, we can win – no matter who we play. And I NEVER felt that way with Sendek or Sidney.

    I agree with all of these posts. I know many don’t feel like the program has made progress or is in a good place, but I remain stubbornly optimistic.

    #72943
    coach13
    Participant

    Seems like a big part of the blowing leads is the lack of our adjustment to the other team’s adjustment. Someone said we go away from what got us the lead to start with…but alot of the time it’s what the other team is doing and how they adjust counter us. It just takes us a long time when that happens to find a plan B and often we find it too late or not at all.

    #72955
    WV Wolf
    Keymaster

    Nice work, I know from experience the time it takes to go through the numbers for an entry like this.

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