Just the Tip: Unlocking the Secrets to Louisville's Slump

After winning ten ACC games in a row, a feat that hadn’t been done in 37 years, the Cards lost an ugly one to Georgia Tech. What we expected was a bounce back game against Clemson. What we got was an even worse dud than the one before. Now the team, the city, the fan base, and seemingly all of college basketball are scrambling for answers as to what happened to the hottest team in the country and how to fix it.

Since the loss to Clemson endless estimations have been thrown around ranging from lineup changes to scrapping the entire defensive philosophy, and basically everything you can imagine in between. But to me all of these suggestions fell flat. There I sat at my desk this past Friday afternoon listening to Mark Ennis’ “The Drive” on 93.9 The Ville (shameless plug for my boss = please give me a raise) when co-host Mark Blankenbaker mentioned in passing his superstition/belief that winning the tip-off in a basketball game actually gives a team an advantage. And then it came to me like Melissa Ethridge’s lover came to her window. It was right under our noses all along, but we were just thinking too big. Perhaps the answer all along really was that simple: Louisville just needs to win the jump-ball to start a game in order to win and get out of this slump.

But that’s ludicrous, right? I mean, I even sent a text to the UPS Jobs Textline (another shameless plug for you, Mark. Please, my wife and I are so hungry) joking that “50% of the time the team that wins the tip wins the game.” Ennis even read the message on air, because I am hilarious and deserve to be on the show. So I did some digging and it turns out the idea might not be as ridiculous as you’re probably thinking.

For starters, I’d like to thank ESPN, CBS, NBC, and Yahoo for their inability to consistently record the opening jump-ball in play-by-play game logs up until the last two seasons. I’d also like to thank none other than Ken Pomeroy (of course) for being one of the only individuals on the face of the earth who has actually considered the possibility that winning the tip matters.

KenPom explains in his 2005 article, “The Value of Ben Gillery,” that based on using the Pythagorean theorem to calculate a team’s odds of winning if they’ve won the tip, the winner of the tip is 3.5% more likely to win the game. How so? KenPom explains:

“Let’s say teams A and B both average a point per possession. In a 70 possession game, you’d expect each team to score 70 points (totally ignoring defense). So A’s expected winning percentage against B would be…

70^10 / ( 70^10 + 70^10 ) = .500

We didn’t need to work through this formula to know that Team A has a 50% chance to beat a team equal to it. But what if Team A gets an extra possession? They would be expected to score 71 points in their 71 possessions. Their expected winning percentage in this scenario would be…

71^10 / ( 71^10 + 70^10 ) = .535”

So, there you have it. With that extra possession that’s usually earned from the tip-off, though not guaranteed, the team that gets the ball first has a 3.5% advantage. KenPom estimates that the team that wins the tip usually gains half a possession while the losing opponent loses half a possession. Math says that means a roughly a full possession difference.

Obviously, the model isn’t perfect as it doesn’t account for more or less possessions in a game. For example, the tip-off in a game against a team like Virginia, where there are only 50 or so possessions, is far more valuable than a shoot-out that has upwards of 80-85 possessions. It also doesn’t account for the talent of the teams involved. For example, if Louisville averages 1.1 points per possession while Bellarmine averages 0.9 points per possession, and each team gets 70 possessions, Louisville wins 88.1% of the time…

“77^10 / ( 77^10 + 63^10 ) = .881”

When I ran Louisville’s numbers against this data, I fully expected Louisville’ numbers to be boosted by their non-conference numbers in comparison to their isolated ACC numbers, however that was not the case. And while my data from just the last two seasons certainly wouldn’t qualify as statistically significant in most nerd circles (thanks again, ESPN, CBS, NBC, and Yahoo), the data is interesting, nonetheless.

In the 2018-19 season Louisville won 66.6% of their games when winning the tip, while only winning 47.4% of their games when they lost the opening jump-ball. Fully expecting that these numbers would regress closer to 50% once I leveled the playing field by isolating the data to just conference play, the numbers did not do so. Instead, the numbers pushed even further as Louisville won 80% of its conference games when winning the tip, while only winning 46.7% of their games when losing the tip.

This year the numbers follow a somewhat similar trend as Louisville has won 85% of its games when winning the tip to its 66% when losing the tip. Conference play also once again has a greater difference as Louisville has won 90% of its ACC games when winning the tip while only winning 60% of their games when losing the jump-ball. Oh, and who makes the 40% of games that Louisville has lost when losing the tip? That's right. Georgia Tech and Clemson.

So, bringing things back around full circle, based KenPom’s basic arithmetic and my extremely limited range of data, Louisville’s secret to success is clearly winning the tip-off.

Sure you could “well actually” me to death with a virtually endless list of contributing factors that go into why or why not a tip-off may be beneficial to a team and how with a wider range of data the numbers would probably show a regression to the mean, and I fully expect y’all to do so, that is not the point my friends. The point is that whatever is bothering this team is probably not as grand as we’d all like to imagine. It’s probably (hopefully) something as dumb and miniscule as the team losing focus or collectively going into a slump at the exact same moment. But if whatever (again, hopefully) small button or switch can be undone, then there’s very little reason this team can’t go back to setting record win streaks.

Regardless, just win the tip-offs.