Ken Pomeroy's "Hurricane Dicta"

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Ken Pomeroy has posted a list of his core basketball beliefs.  I've shortened the list to a few I found of particular relevance, but you can read the entire post here.  I italicized the last one because of it's relation to Thursday night's game.  I'm sure some will say the game wasn't that close with a minute and a half to play, but ultimately, in the final 18 seconds, it was:

Hurricane Dicta

On this eve of Super Bowl Weekend involving Da Bears, it?s appropriate to acknowledge that we all have a little Dicta inside of ourselves. Big Ten Wonk reminded me of one my own dicta a while back, and I decided to create a complete list of the the others right here. If you?re ever wondering why things are so darn messed up around here, let this be your reference guide. These are my core hoops beliefs and philosophies.

Don?t confuse achievement with performance. If I somehow happened to become a coach, I would totally write this on the chalkboard after a close win over a lousy team. Future achievement can be better predicted by past performance than past achievement. How to measure performance is the tricky part, but I know it goes deeper than recording W?s and L?s, or even looking at who a team beat and lost to. If you?re wondering why I am often unconcerned about past achievements, it?s because so many other people have that covered. You can look at the conference standings and see achievement. Trying to figure out a team?s level of performance is more challenging, but also more insightful. Naturally, there comes a time in the season where achievement trumps performance, and that time is called March Madness.

The RPI is nearly useless. Following from above, the RPI measures achievement for the most part. I don?t have much use for it these days. (Although, a hearty thanks to Mr. David Rueth who continues to ensure that my site designations continue to match what the NCAA has in their database, thus ensuring a totally accurate RPI on this site for those of you that need that sort of info.) I know I once defended the thing, and in its original form, the combination of simplicity and accuracy was admirable. But the RPI was invented in 1981! In 1981, it was a state of the art formula. In 1981, Atari was a state of the art video game system. Kids aren?t playing games on an Atari, yet the RPI is still the gold standard for the NCAA.

One game matters little in evaluating performance. Honestly, I don?t think my mind is ever changed by one game. If you want to bore me, try to convince me that team A is better than team B because A beat B. I need a little more than that. It gets even better when you tell me that team A beat team C who beat team B. I need to see longer-term trends to base an opinion on it.

Stats don?t lie. Seriously. If Joe Blow scores 20 points in a game, he scores 20 points. If he does it on 10 for 36 shooting with 12 turnovers, and Johnny Analyst praises Joe Blow?s brilliant offensive performance, then it?s Johnny Analyst doing the lying, not the stats.

The single most important factor in determining the outcome of close games is chaos. I used to call this luck, but that hurts people?s feelings, so the new PC term is ?chaos.? Anyway, there?s no silver bullet to winning close games. It helps to be better than the opponent, but aside from that, there are dozens of factors that influence the outcome of the one-possession game, some of which a team has no control over.