Anyone who watched the NCAA Final on Monday – or more accurately tried to watch it – acknowledges that it was one of the worst performances in a championship game in recent memory.  

Now, a few sports radio shows have lobbed theories that there was something wrong with the rims, whcih made the game unplayable.  And just about any sports organization that has reason to fear NCAA retribution has flat out denied that could be a reason.

I think the problem could be bigger.  There’s a reason we don’t see a lot of basketball games in 70,000 seat football stadiums.  It’s a bad environment for hoops.  And you get stuck using a temporary floor and temporary rims for your 3 most important games of the season.

This research is not complete, but here’s a first, albeit shallow, look at the last 10 NCAA Final games.  All I’ve done is taken the Team Field Goal % for the Winning and Losing Teams, and compare them to how the teams shot during the year on average.  Using FG%, and not Total Points, should take out some of the fluctuations that could arise from a shortage or abundance of foul calls during the game.

Quick math shows that Winning teams see their FG% drop from around 48.3% to 45.7%  And the Losing teams drop from about 46.4% to 37.1%.  So, if both teams see their FG% fall during the only games in which they play in 70,000 seat stadiums, maybe we have to assign a little fault to these temporary rims.  And if we are going to assign some fault to the temporary rims, maybe it’s possible the guys who set up THESE temporary rims in Houston were a bunch of numbskulls.  More data to come this weekend.