The Hot Hand in Sports

In a battle of two disappointing Big 12 men's teams, Texas Tech and Nebraska, the Red Raiders went on a 17-0 spurt (from down 16-19 to ahead 33-19; see play-by-play sheet), only to be one-upped by the Cornhuskers. Nebraska later went on an 18-0 run of its own, from down 47-37 to up 55-47. Neither team could handle prosperity, which perhaps tells us why they have six conference wins between them, but ultimately, the Huskers prevailed in double-overtime.

Brian Rafalski, a Michigan-born, University of Wisconsin-Madison educated, longtime NHL hockey player is known specifically for not having a hard shot. Yet, in recent Winter Olympic action, he scored four straight of the U.S. team's goals. Last Thursday, Rafalski scored the Americans' final two goals in a 6-1 rout of Norway. Then, in Sunday night's U.S. win over Canada, Rafalski scored the first two goals for the Red, White, and Blue. Not bad for someone who, at this interrupted point in the NHL season, has a total of four goals in 57 games!

Here are some recent runs of one team badly outscoring its opponent in basketball:

The Orlando Magic outscored the Boston Celtics 19-0 en route to a 96-89 win (Sunday).

The University of Texas women's basketball team went on two separate 19-2 runs against Texas Tech (from 14-17 down to 33-19 up; and in expanding a 60-45 lead to 79-47) in defeating the Lady Raiders, 81-51 (Sunday).

The Texas men were on the other end of a scoring burst, allowing Kansas to go on a 22-0 spurt, as part of an 80-68 Jayhawk win (Monday).

I spent the weekend in Madison, Wisconsin, attending the Michigan-Wisconsin outdoor hockey game at Camp Randall football stadium. Given the temperature -- 16 degrees Fahrenheit by game's end -- it's safe to assume that cold hands (and other body parts) were the rule. I have ties to both schools, having received my Ph.D. at Michigan and twice served as a summer visiting professor at Wisconsin, so as soon as this special game was announced many months ago, I decided I had to be there! And, I took some photos as well, which you can click on to enlarge.

If I had to identify a hot-hand performance in the game, it would be the Badgers' Brendan Smith scoring two power-play goals in the game's final minutes, first to tie the game 2-2 with 5:32 remaining and then give Wisconsin the game-winner with 1:22 left. Truth be told, the Wolverines' penalty-killing seemed very poor; even on Badger power plays where they didn't score, Michigan rarely could clear the zone.

At the pro level, two NHL teams have major winning streaks. Thanks to a dramatic comeback win yesterday over Pittsburgh, the Washington Capitals have now been victorious in 14 straight games (game-by-game log), which is just three short of the league record of 17.

Also, the Los Angeles Kings have won nine straight, which is a franchise record. The Kings' history includes such all-time greats as Wayne Gretzky, Luc Robitaille, and Marcel Dionne; hence, it surprises me that today's lower-profile squad is the one setting the record.

In Saturday NBA action, LeBron James scored 24 straight of his team's points in leading Cleveland to a win over New York. James's feat was reminiscent of something he did in a big 2007 playoff game.

When the Michigan State and Wisconsin men's basketball teams take the court tonight at the Kohl Center in Madison (and in UW's following games), we'll get a chance to see if Badgers forward Keaton Nankivil can continue his recent hot stretch of three-point shooting.

Last Thursday at Purdue, Nankivil made an astonishing 7-of-8 from behind the arc. What makes this accomplishment so amazing is that in no previous game this season had Nankivil made more than two treys; further, in the 20 Badger games before the Purdue contest, he had attempted more than three three-pointers only four times (see page 15 of tonight's game notes).

Last year, Nankivil did have a game in which he shot 5-for-5 on threes (also against Purdue), which is all the more noteworthy because he made only nine shots from behind the arc in the 2008-09 season.

In part, Nankivil's increased shooting of late may be a response to teammate Jon Leuer's being out due to injury. Whether Nankivil can become a steady three-point threat, or is just showing signs of becoming college basketball's version of Hee-Seop Choi (a baseball player whose brief major-league career included one three-game series in which he hit six home runs) remains to be seen.

The Texas Tech Lady Raiders have now missed all 20 of their three-point attempts in their last two games. Tech went 0-of-8 last Saturday at Texas A&M and 0-of-12 last night at home against Nebraska.

Going into the Texas A&M game, Texas Tech was hitting three-pointers at a .338 clip. Subtracting that from 1 yields a .662 miss rate. We then raise .662 to the 20th power, giving us an estimate of .0003 (or 3-in-10,000) as the probability of the Lady Raiders missing all 20 trey attempts in their next two games. (This procedure is akin to raising one-sixth to the second power to determine the probability of a rolling double-sixes on two dice, which is 1/36.)

Tech has not always shot so poorly from behind the arc. In a December win at UCLA, for example, the Lady Raiders made nearly half of their long-distance shots (9-of-19; .474). Further, on two occasions, at home vs. Arkansas-Pine Bluff (13-23; .565) and in a neutral-site tournament game vs. North Dakota (10-of-18; .556), Tech exceeded 50% on trey attempts.

Here are a few factors to consider in looking at a cold streak like Texas Tech's. First, the rarity of the streak may be exaggerated, given that its dramatic nature drew me into doing a statistical analysis of it, rather than looking at a random cross-section of all teams. Second, one might wonder if a team's poorest outside shooters took a disproportionate number of shots during the drought; that does not seem to be the case as the Lady Raiders' two main outside scoring threats, Jordan Murphree and Ashlee Roberson, took a sizable share of the threes. Third, a scenario that can lead to a lot of missed threes is when a team falls way behind and puts up a lot of desperation shots in an attempt to make up the deficit as quickly as possible. I watched some of the Nebraska game on television and, as the Cornhuskers were opening up a big lead in the first half, I would say the Lady Raiders were putting up some ill-advised treys in an attempt to close the gap.

The University of Memphis had its winning streak in Conference USA games snapped at 64 last night by the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). Memphis's 64 victories had tied the previous record for consecutive wins in conference play, set by Kentucky in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) from 1945-1950.

Texas Tech nearly pulled out a miracle win against Missouri tonight in Big 12 men's hoops action, thanks to some amazing late three-point shooting. However, Mizzou held on for a 94-89 overtime win.

The Tigers led 74-66 with a little over a minute remaining in regulation. At that point, the Red Raiders' Brad Reese hit a three. Then, quickly finding himself with the ball again after a teammate's steal of Mizzou's inbounds pass, Reese hit another three, just four seconds after his last (play-by-play sheet). Reese was 5-of-6 from behind the arc on the evening.

Mizzou held Tech at bay a bit and hit some free throws to expand its lead to 77-72 with 45 seconds remaining. The Raiders' Nick Okorie then hit a trey with 0:43 left, bringing Tech again within two. Thanks to a late Tiger turnover, the Red Raiders were able to send the game into overtime, tied at 79-all.

In the overtime, Tech's John Roberson made a pair of threes at the 4:09 and 3:30 marks, keeping alive the Raiders' streak from behind the arc, before missing from long-distance at the 2:58 mark. Tech made no more three-pointers, however, and missed a couple of key free throws, thus allowing the Tigers to escape Lubbock with a victory.

In men's college basketball, Oklahoma State went on a 29-1 run to overcome an early deficit and pull away from Texas Tech.

And then there were... none. There are no longer any undefeated teams in the National Football League, as the Indianapolis Colts fell to the New York Jets this afternoon.

Last night saw the extension of one major winning streak and the ending of another.

The Penn State women's volleyball team won its 102nd straight match and third straight NCAA championship, defeating Texas in a dramatic comeback.

However, the NFL's New Orleans Saints suffered their first loss of the season, 24-17 to Dallas. The Saints are now 13-1. The Indianapolis Colts (14-0) are now the only team in contention for a perfect record, with two games to go in the regular season and the playoffs to follow.

Some brief items today:

The Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints each extended their records to 13-0 in NFL action. For Indy, it was also a record 22nd straight regular-season victory.

Golfer Ernie Els had his streak of winning at least one pro tournament a year snapped at 18. In other words, each year from 1991 to 2008, Els had captured at least one tournament, although sometimes on a tour other than the United States PGA (e.g., European Tour, Japan Tour). A comprehensive list of Els's wins is available on his Wikipedia page.

The University of Akron men's soccer team saw it hopes for an undefeated season fall just short, with an overtime (penalty kicks) loss to the University of Virginia in the NCAA College Cup final. The Zips entered the match 23-0-1 (apparently the semi-final match Akron won over North Carolina on penalty kicks is officially considered a tie; see game-by-game log).

Joe Levy just sent me an e-mail with the subject heading "The cold leg in soccer," regarding what happened to Maccabi Haifa, Israel's top soccer squad, in the European Champions League. Playing in a four-team pool against other countries' national champions (with each team facing each opponent twice), Maccabi Haifa became, in the words of a Yahoo/Eurosport article, "the first team to lose all six group games without scoring a goal."

Making matters worse were the circumstances of the sixth shut-out defeat: "The Israeli league leaders lost 1-0 to Bordeaux, who recorded a fifth successive Champions League victory despite fielding a second-string side."

Yesterday's New York Times had an article on Penn State women's volleyball coach Russ Rose and his program's current 98-match winning streak as it moves into this year's round of 16 in search of a third straight national championship. As the article notes of the 98 straight wins:

It is the longest winning streak in N.C.A.A. Division I women’s sports history, and the second longest over all, trailing only the Miami men’s tennis program, winner of 137 straight from 1957 to 1964.

In recent weeks, Penn State volleyball passed, among others, the 88-game winning streak of John Wooden’s U.C.L.A. men’s basketball teams from 1971 to ’74, and the North Carolina women’s soccer program, which won 92 in a row from 1990 to 1994.

As seen on this year's Nittany Lion volleyball schedule/results page, Penn State not only is a perfect 34-0 thus far in matches, but has won nearly every time by a score of three sets to none. Only once, in a mid-October match at Michigan, have the Lions been taken to the maximum five sets.

The New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts each survived another weekend with perfect 12-0 records. Only four more games to go for 16-0 regular-season records! In fact, even the existence of two 11-0 teams (a week ago) was unprecedented in the NFL.

Nets win! Nets win!

The New Jersey Nets, who set a new NBA record for worst start to a season by losing their first 18 games, finally got their first win, with a 97-91 victory tonight over Charlotte.

With their 98-91 loss this afternoon to the New York Knicks, the New Jersey Nets have now lost all 13 of their games thus far this season. The NBA record for worst start to a season is 0-17.

UPDATE: The Nets' losing streak has progressed to 0-16 and the coach has been fired.

For the first time in Coach Pete Carroll's nine years on the job, his University of Southern California football team has lost a game played in November, with yesterday's 55-21 shellacking by Stanford. As noted in the linked L.A. Times article, "The November win streak, which reached 28-0 with last week's victory at Arizona State, began in 2001, when the Trojans finished fast and wound up in the Las Vegas Bowl."

November is arguably the toughest month for a team, as it plays some of its biggest traditional rivals with placement in as good a bowl game as possible often at stake. USC's 28 consecutive November victories are shown in the following list, by opponent (@ = road game). Indeed, one sees games against cross-town rival UCLA (although the Bruin-Trojan battle was later moved to early December) and national rival Notre Dame (only in the even-numbered years, as the teams play in South Bend, Indiana, in the middle of October in odd-numbered years, supposedly because USC does not want to play in the cold of November).

2001 Oregon State, @California, UCLA
2002 @Stanford, Arizona St., @UCLA, Notre Dame
2003 Washington St., @Arizona, UCLA
2004 @Oregon St., Arizona, Notre Dame
2005 Stanford, @California, Fresno St.
2006 @Stanford, Oregon, California, Notre Dame
2007 Oregon St., @California, @Arizona State
2008 Washington, California, @Stanford, Notre Dame
2009 @Arizona State

In one sense, the 28-game win streak survived on a bit of a technicality; in 2006, USC lost to UCLA, but game was played on December 2. USC's game-by-game logs from 2002-2009 can be found here, whereas the 2001 log can be found here.

The Indianapolis Colts survived a scare today from Houston, to lift their record to 8-0 this season. As noted in this ESPN.com article, the Colts have now won 17 straight NFL regular-season games, which ties for the third-longest such streak in league history. A year ago, the Colts won their final nine regular-season games, before making a quick exit from the playoffs at the hands of San Diego.

The NFL also has one other 8-0 team, the New Orleans Saints, who beat Carolina today.