FOLLOWING UP

In the previous post, I noted that Maryland's opponents have shot .131 lower from the line than their collective season free throw percentage (actually, in that post I think I gave .138 as the difference, but that was wrong; Maryland's home opponents have shot .578 from the line this season, and their collective FT% is .709). This raised a couple questions: First, is that unusual? If so, is there something in the air (or behind the basket) in Comcast Center that makes players miss, or is this a one-season anomaly based on a small sample size?

The answer to the first question would appear to be Yes, this is unusual. Since the 2005 season, the biggest such disparity other than Maryland's was Georgia Tech in 2005, whose opponents hit .085 less in the Thriller Dome than those same teams did in all their other games.

The answer to the second question is Probably Not. In 2005 and 2006, Maryland's opponents actually shot slightly better from the line in Comcast Center than they did elsewhere (+.003 in '05 and +.033 in '06). So maybe the hypnotic spinners are having some effect--there's no way to prove that they are or are not--but the likely explanation is that the 2007 Terps have just been lucky to have their opponents shoot poorly from the line in their home games this season.

SHINY HAPPY WAHOOS

Saturday's Virginia-Georgia Tech game featured something I'd never seen before. As fans entered the Basketball Jones they were given what looked like a rolled up-scroll with a handle at each end (no, that's not the weird part; fans are often given cheaply-manufactured objects which they can use to litter the floor of the grandstands show their school spirit). When unfurled, these scrolls said "Go Hoos Go" in blue on an orange background. They were made of mylar, so the reverse was a mirror-like surface.

When the teams changed ends in the second half, and the Yellow Jackets started shooting into the end of the arena with the bulk of the student section, the Virginia students started shaking the scrolls with the shiny surface toward the court, which had the effect of reflecting the arena lights back at the court, making for a very tough shooter's backdrop, and evidently also was hell on the TV cameras (it didn't seem to affect the Tech shooters all that much, though--they hit 3 of their 5 shots in that stretch).

At the first media timeout, the public address announcer told the kids to cut it out, and that if they didn't the 'Hoos would be assessed a technical foul. Fun over. (Incidentally, since there's nothing in the rules to specifically prevent fans from flashing shiny film at the court, Karl Hess and crew had to use the artificial noisemaker clause of the rulebooks to get the things put away.)

Some friends and I were talking about this yesterday, generally agreeing that the officials had every right to make the kids stop, when one of the guys brought up the subject of the big spinners--you know, the ones that look like hypnosis spirals) the Maryland student section has been displaying this season, and wondering why they've been allowed, and, more importantly, whether the suckers work.

Well, it turns out that they do. Obviously, small sample size cautions apply any time we're talking about seven games, but Maryland's opponents have shot .138 points worse in the Comcast Center than they have in their other games. That's 17 points that, one could argue, Maryland's student section has given their team over 7 games. Let's have a table, eh?

Date	Team	gFTM	gFTA	gFT%	sFT%	exFTM	netFTM
1/10/2007	Miami	22	29	.759	.742	21.5	0.5
1/13/2007	Clemson	5	13	.385	.579	7.5	-2.5
1/24/2007	Georgia Tech	6	16	.375	.698	11.2	-5.2
2/ 6/2007	Virginia	11	13	.846	.741	9.6	1.4
2/11/2007	Duke	6	13	.462	.688	8.9	-2.9
2/21/2007	Florida State	16	27	.593	.775	20.9	-4.9
2/25/2007	North Carolina	8	17	.471	.708	12.0	-4.0

gFTM, gFTA, and gFT% are the stats for each team in the respective games; sFT% is the team's season free throw percentage in all ACC games; exFTM is the number of free throws each team would make if they hit their season percentage in each game; and netFTM is the difference between the actual and expected free throws made.

I haven't dived into the full play-by-play for these games, but it'd be interesting to see that broken down even more by half, as the Comcast Center (I think) only has student seating at one end of the court.

Update: Maryland's opponents have hit 60% of their first half free throws and 56.4% in the second half.