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Spreadsheet of Improbable and Crushing Hoyas Losses

By CasualHoya
NCAA Basketball: Butler at Georgetown Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

Remarkable work here by longtime reader of the blog "craigesherickfreshpick":

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Inspired by yet another soul-crushing loss to Syracuse, I thought I'd add my own contribution to Hoya glory by documenting all statistically seemingly improbable losses since my freshman year of college (the ill-fated '01-'02 season).

I used KenPom's admittedly imperfect table of in-game win probability for teams of equal strength as the basis for my list. It's possible I missed a game or two, but I think this list of 39 games (updated to include last night's Butler debacle!) is fairly exhaustive. In those 39 games, we have blown an average lead of 10.56 points with an average time of 14.1 minutes left in the second half. We had an average 84.44% chance of winning those games and ended up losing them by an average of 5.5 points.

Crushing Losses

Date Team Result Lead Blown Time Left (min) Win Prob Swing from time of max lead
Date Team Result Lead Blown Time Left (min) Win Prob Swing from time of max lead
12-27-17 Butler 91-89 2OT 18 20 93% -22
12-16-17 Cuse 86-79 OT 13 11 91% -20
2-22-17 DePaul 67-65 14 29 76% -16
11-15-16 Maryland 76-75 9 2 95% -10
11-22-15 Duke 86-84 8 24 71% -10
11-17-15 Maryland 75-71 7 4 88% -9
11-14-15 Radford 82-80 2OT 8 10 82% -10
2-14-15 Provy 75-71 13 11 91% -17
1-10-15 Provy 60-57 OT 7 8 80% -10
11-27-14 Wisconsin 68-65 9 11 84% -12
1-20-14 Marquette 80-72 OT 7 3 89% -15
1-18-14 Seton Hall 67-57 9 20 78% -19
1-15-14 Xavier 80-67 17 15 94% -30
11-21-13 Northeastern 63-56 14 18 93% -21
1-19-13 South Florida 61-58 11 6 94% -14
3-8-12 Cincy (BET) 72-70 2OT 11 9 90% -13
2-3-10 South Florida 72-64 11 18 83% -19
3-18-09 Baylor (NIT) 74-72 10 20 80% -12
3-3-09 St. John's 59-56 OT 15 11 94% -18
2-7-09 Cincy 64-62 OT 12 18 85% -14
1-25-09 Seton Hall 65-60 7 11 78% -12
11-28-08 Tennessee 90-78 8 9 83% -20
3-23-08 Davidson (2nd Round) 74-70 17 18 92% -21
2-9-08 Lousville 59-51 8 19 76% -16
1-8-08 Villanova 56-52 9 19 78% -13
2-2-07 Duke 61-52 7 20 72% -16
11-19-06 ODU 75-62 8 15 78% -21
3-24-06 Florida (Sweet 16) 57-53 9 28 69% -13
3-10-06 Syracuse (BET) 58-57 15 18 90% -16
2-12-06 West Virginia 69-56 10 21 79% -23
1-11-06 West Virginia 68-61 11 24 77% -17
3-24-05 South Carolina (NIT) 69-66 8 15 78% -11
2-24-04 Pittsburgh 68-58 8 13 79% -18
2-21-04 Syracuse 57-54 8 17 76% -11
1-6-04 BC 72-64 8 3 92% -16
3-1-03 Syracuse 93-84 OT 12 13 88% -21
1-18-03 St. John's 77-72 17 7 97% -22
3-7-02 Miami (BET) 84-76 10 7 88% -18
1-5-02 Rutgers 89-87 2OT 9 5 92% -11
Avg Lead Blown (pts) Avg Time Left (min to go) Avg Win Prob % Avg Point Swing from Max Lead
10.56410256 14.1025641 84.43589744 -16.07692308

Note that this list does NOT include other devastating losses, such as FGCU, Ohio, VCU, Arkansas St., and other games where we were more or less waxed from the opening tip. I have those documented on another spreadsheet, but I think enough attention has been given to them by you and others on the blog.

In any event, I have no idea if this list would be of interest, but I'm sharing it with you in case it is. Someone with a better knowledge of statistics could probably generate a comprehensive study to determine whether Georgetown is indeed, as we suspect, the worst team in all of college basketball to root for over the past 15 years (judging solely by games that we improbably lose).

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Which of the above stings the most?

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