
Originally Posted by
donjuan
Because college basketball games magically change their distributions come tourney time?
Well...maybe!
Fact: Post-season games have a higher percentage of close games than regular season games. Now does that mean the distribution should be adjusted for post-season, or that key numbers exist in post-season? I will leave that up to you math gurus.
Since 2000, there have been 39,032 regular season games through last night (2/28/08), and the average winning margin regardless of pointspread has been +12.8 points. During the same time, there have been 712 post-season games (NCAA + NIT), and the AMOV is two full points less, at +10.8 points.
Now down below, I will list side-by-side the percentage of games there were decided by specific margins from 1 to 10 for regular season on the left and post season on the right. Take note of the increased percenatge of one-point games specifically in post-season and of games decided by five points or less in general:
Code:
Reg Season 39032 Post-Season 712
1 4.38% 1 6.32%
2 5.45% 2 5.90%
3 6.28% 3 6.46%
4 5.18% 4 5.20%
5 5.32% 5 6.04%
6 4.83% 6 4.35%
7 4.89% 7 4.21%
8 4.81% 8 6.32%
9 4.53% 9 5.62%
10 4.49% 10 6.04%