Ken Pomeroy is the man when it comes to college basketball statistics. There’s no one else even close. He looks at angles that nobody else has thought of and produces numbers that let you see the game in a new light.
With this being the offseason, Ken is obviously a bit bored. So, he’s shining that new light in some obscure places, like at at the value of winning the opening tip.
The premise is a bit silly, but it’s fun nonetheless. And actually, since what he’s really looking at is the value of one extra possession, there is real value to what he discovered. He boils it down to showing that one extra possession in a game against evenly matched teams provides that team with a 3-5% increase in their chance to win. Not too insignificant!