Thought this was as good a place as any to plug this, rather than starting a new topic.
Several threads have comments that the Griz are too prone to long scoring droughts, and that complaint does have some merit. In both conference losses, the Griz had at least one long drought … over 7 mins. against Idaho State and about 4 mins. against Northern Colorado.
But are the Griz “prone” to such long droughts? That partly depends upon your definition of ”long.” In their six wins, the Griz suffered no drought over 4 mins., and only one over 3 mins. (3:19). The rest saw 2 mins. or less. Ironically, the over 3 min drought was more than balanced by a 3:59 min drought by Idaho.
A common comment notes that such droughts are a part of basketball. Naturally, I wondered if the data supported that assertion. Since there were a ton of games yesterday, I decided to do a survey. I applied one main criteria: the game had to end relatively close, say less than 10 points difference. Even within that restriction, I didn’t look at every result, but I think I got a good sampling. The results are instructive.
In the games I examined, over half showed droughts of at least 3 mins. In fact, about a third of the sample had droughts of over 4 mins. Moreover, the teams with the longest drought was not always the loser. Duke, for example, scored only a single point for almost 7 mins coming out of halftime, but won by 7 points anyway. Of course, many droughts did result in a loss. Example: North Carolina State fell behind by scoring just one point during almost 7 mins. leading into halftime. They made it closer toward the end, but still lost at home, 57-63 (to SMU). The Rhode Island at La Salle game must have been painful: early in the second half, both suffered droughts at more or less the same time – over 4 mins. (La Salle) and over 5 mins (RI). Between them, they scored just one point over that 4-5 min span. Ouch!
I also looked at all the Big Sky games from yesterday. There were no long droughts for either team in the NAU at Idaho game. Not quite a drought in the Weber State game because the Wildcats did keep scoring. But they had a 21 point lead with 7:40 left in the game. Then Sac State got hot and whittled that down to just 6 points at the end.
Portland State gave Idaho State some early hope by having a 5:33 drought midway through the first half. They began to pull away in the second half, then the Bengals sealed their fate with a 3 min drought midway through the second half.
EWU hung with Northern Colorado, leading at several points. However, a 6-point lead went away with a 3:21 drought with about 9 mins. left in the game. It was close after that, but the Bears won with a spurt in the last minute. Very much a woulda, coulda, shoulda.
The Griz built a pretty good lead over the kitties, with no long dry spells. Still, MSU was slowly closing the gap until they hit a 2 min drought with around 3 mins. left in the game. They gained ground after that and made the end nerve wracking, to say the least.
Conclusion from all this: Spurts and dry spells are the norm in basketball, and the Griz are in no way unusual (good or bad) in this regard.
