Ou - Bu

[schooner2]

Great game so far. OU up 33-31 with about 2 1/2 left in the first half. Leah Rush is on fire for Oklahoma. Young has two fouls and TWO points only so far. Sounds great, but no dad-gum TV! I'm getting mad.

[schooner2]

Wow, Oklahoma up 37-36 at halftime. Rush has 16 points and is doing everything for OU. Young only 2 points and 2 fouls. Wabara for Baylor is BU's point leader with 10. She only plays about 9 minutes a game, but the sophomore is doing very well.

[YemenBear]

Man oh man, all of these close games are killing me. It was nip and tick against Texas, then triple overtime with the Huskers. Now we're in a 1 point ballgame against the Sooners. Come on Bears! Step it up and let's put this one away!

[Jimi]

Baylor wins by ten. I think it was 74-64. The B-12 is going to be very tough.

[YemenBear]

Lady Bears pull out the win 78 to 68. Very balanced scoring by the Lady Bears. Five players finished in double figures...Blackmom, Wabara, Young, Niemann, Scott. Good to see Emily get back into the offensive groove. Baylor hit six 3-pointers in final 8 minutes of the contest. Gotta defend the home court in this league.

Leah Rush had 26 points, carrying most of the scoring burden for the Sooners. Shoush also shot well.

Another good crowd on hand at the Ferrell Center, with 7,640 in attendance. Based on audio broadcast, it sounded like OU had a decent crowd on hand.

Now it's time to focus on the journey down I-35 for the rematch with the Longhorns.

[swok34]

I'm surprised that OU was able to hang.....I really thought Baylor would leave us in the dirt. Sherri was pleased with her team and the effort they exerted.

A friend of mine at the game told me they were all over Dionnah......she had a horrible shooting game....

Leah, Leah, Rush 78 Baylor Bears 68........

ok, it wasn't quite that bad, but Leah came up with 26 of the 78 points. Lauren Shoush also finished with 11 points.

No one, on either side of the ball, hit double figures in rebounds. Wow.....OU only had 9 turnovers, that has to be a new record.

[spooky]

Good game from both teams. Leah Rush is monster with that little 15 foot turnaround. I thought we did a pretty decent job defending the three and keeping Dionnah in check.

A really big factor was the rebounding for the Bears. OU held a 20-16 edge heading down the stretch of the first half, and had done a great job of keeping the ball alive on the offensive end. But Baylor, and especially Sophia came alive in the second and won the board battle by 8.

The best news for Baylor is that, even though Sophia and Steffanie were not bad at all, this game was carried and won by the "other" players. Abi Wabara gets the start and looked more like Sophia than Sophia, getting a career high and doing a great job on the boards. Emily Niemann only had one 3-pointer but showed off the other parts of her game and led the scoring. Chameka Scott and Angela Tisdale each hit three big threes down the stretch, more than one of which had Kim on her knees in the classic "No, Angela, no....good shot, Angela!!!" mode. On her last one all she could do was smirk.

Oh yeah, we can actually shoot free throws. Any chance for a do-over, Huskers????

Great crowd (sixth largest of all time) and a great atmosphere for a really good game. Ou is playing much better than I when i saw them against TCU. Norman on the 8th will be a mighty struggle.

[swok34]

"We felt like option A for Baylor is go to their bigs in the lane,'' Coale said. "So we try to make them go to option B, maybe make them go to option C. I felt like we did that. Option C for them was really, really good.''

What's a team to do?
http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung0304/fragend/confused-smiley-013.gif

[BearLady]

swok, leahleahleah sure lit it up today! What a pretty j! I had a feeling it was going to be a really long afternoon, after the Sooners came out bombing away and scorching the nets for 3s early on.

It seemed that both the Lady Bears and the fans were a little slow getting going. Even one of the most anticipated aspects of the game, the wardrobe match-ups, was pretty tame. ;) Not much in the way of coaching theatrics from either side.

About the only notable non-court action was the serenade of raspberries that the officials got as they left the court at halftime. Just before the first half ended, they made a very unpopular call against one of the Baylor players. So the crowd continued voicing their displeasure as the refs left the court. I noticed that Sherri was walking a little behind the refs, and she actually had a few good chuckles over it! I suppose that the coaches don't often get to enjoy the zebras catching raspberries :)

It's good to get this one behind us, but as Spooky said, it sure won't be easy on the flip side.

:bu:

[Bob_Ballew]

I knew that Leah Rush had a great baseline shot, but I didn't expect her to get off as many shots as she did. She did a great job of going to the basket. OU played a very tough game as they usually do against the Lady Bears. I have to give them credit for their defense in the low post.

On the other hand, I was disapointed by the Lady Bear's offense. It appeared to me that their spacing was way off. Maybe it was the sluggish ball movement. They seem to play much better when their passing game is crisp and up-tempo. The guards seem to be just a tad late in making the right pass. They miss opportunities and put themselves in tough situations by being stagnant. I was glad to see Angela and Chameka hit the late treys. On a more positive note, it was good to see five players in double digits. Coach has said she wants to get Abi more playing time and I sure hope she does. Every time she hits the court she improves her game. Free throw shooting was much better tonight. It was clearly a major factor in the loss to Nebraska. A win in this league is hard to come by and I was glad we came away with one today.

[#1OUWBBFAN]

We just got back from the game. About a 3 hour drive to Ardmore. Baylor fans are really supporting their team. The crowd was their 6th largest they said. Dionnah was well guarded but also nothing would drop for her. Erin was guarded very closely. In the second half, she could not get off a 3 point shot to save her life. Leah was well guarded also, but it didn't matter. Leah is getting better every game. OU was ahead most of the game until about 7 minutes left in the game.. Baylor made 2 clutch 3 pointers late in the game and we missed the needed shots. You always hate to lose, but this was nothing to be ashamed of.

[brolewis]

I was disappointed with Baylor in the first half, but felt that they really came out to play in the second half. While the score was close until the final few minutes, Baylor controlled the floor much better. While Sophia and Stephanie were not having their 'A' game, the rest of the team stepped in to fill the role. Had Tisdale gotten one more point, we would have had 6 players with double digit scoring, which is wonderful. The girls played a great second half and can only hope they play that way for the rest of the season (especially against our big foes Texas and Tech).

[YCN]

I think it's pretty commonly known that the Big 12 refs call games such that the home team nearly always takes more FT shots than their opponent. The fact the Baylor had 13 more FT's and made 12 more of them was enough all by itself to doom OU to defeat. That and Baylor's effectiveness from 3-point range, especially in the clutch, turned what otherwise would have been a close game or even an OU win into a 10-point Baylor victory.

Baylor was 7-13 on 3's, OU was 7-20. The problem that OU has when Dionnah has an off shooting night (3-15) is that there isn't enough shot creation going on otherwise to compensate for that.

I sure hope that one of our remaining PG's can adequately replace DJ next year, because we are going to miss her many contributions. But with the arrival of Courtney and Ashley Paris next year, we may see a whole lot of assists coming from passes in the frontcourt from A Paris to C Paris serving as some compensation for that loss. Considering the finishing abilities of both those players, defensive rebounds when OU has possession should drop fairly dramatically next year. Baylor had 30 defensive rebounds against OU today.

Speaking of point guards, if there is a quality sleeper out there, maybe one of those will find her way to Norman next year. I'm wondering if there isn't some really good juco PG out there in the boonies, maybe even from somewhere like eastern Europe, who would like join our team...

[BearLady]

YCN, I don't buy your thoughts. Yes, Baylor had more FTs in the game, but only because there were truly more fouls committed by OU. Yes, Baylor made a higher percentage of FTs today. A strong reason why Dionnah had an off night shooting, as you described, was that she was truly blanketed throughout the game.

When crunch time came, the Lady Bears stepped up. Enough to secure the victory.

:bu:

[YCN]

YCN, I don't buy your thoughts. Yes, Baylor had more FTs in the game, but only because there were truly more fouls committed by OU.

You are reading my post wrong. I expect the home team to get to the foul line more often in the Big 12, that's just how it usually is in this league. It had nothing to do with the validity of the fouls being called. I'm not trying to lob sour grapes, just point out the obvious. OU committed only 4 more fouls than Baylor did, it's just that they translated into 13 more shots at the foul line. I'm guessing that the reason for that was Baylor's high shooting percentage on 1-1 opportunities, and OU getting quite a bit more fouls in one half than the other.

I truly believe Baylor won fair and square, but if you go back and look at the box scores historically you will see that a significant majority of the time the home team is called for fewer fouls. I'm not complaining about that, just noticing the obvious. You will find that discrepancy at pretty much all levels of basketball, not just in the Big 12.

[BearLady]

I'm not complaining about that, just noticing the obvious. You will find that discrepancy at pretty much all levels of basketball, not just in the Big 12.

no, I don't track those stats. What I do notice is that if one team tallies more fouls earlier in the half, then it leads to more bonus opportunities for the opposing team.

:bu:

[ouconster]

I am an OU fan and I saw some bad calls, but that is not what cost us the game. Some games you get the calls, some you don't..... some games have bad calls, others don't. But in the end, we didn't stop them and we missed some shots. I think we did great to be on their home court against the #2 team in the country and keep it close to the end. They just hit the shots in the end, we didn't. I get frustrated at some of the calls, like anyone else, but had we hit some shots earlier that we missed, it would have been a different game. You have to move on and improve and I think we will!!

[YCN]

In Big 12 conference games this year, the visiting teams thus far have committed an average of 18.96 fouls per game, yielding an average of 21.35 free throws for the home team.

On the flip side, the home teams have averaged 15.09 fouls yielding an average of 16.39 free throws.

This difference of +3.87 more fouls per game for the visiting teams yielded an average of +4.96 free throws. The games with the largest disparities thus far this year:


OSU fouled 26 times leading to 36 free throws, while Missouri fouled 16 times leading to 15 free throws.
Baylor out-fouled Nebraska just 33 to 25, but Nebraska shot 54 free throws compared to Baylor's 33.
A&M fouled 30 times to 19 for OU, leading to a 39-22 free throw advantage for the Sooners.
OU out-fouled Baylor 18-14, and Baylor shot 25 free throws to OU's 12.
OSU fouled 22 times, Texas 14. UT shot 24 FT's, OSU 13.
Texas Tech committed FEWER fouls than home team Colorado, 16-18, and shot 21 free throws compared to 11 for CU.

[Gator]

...Another good crowd on hand at the Ferrell Center, with more than 7,000 in attendance. Based on audio broadcast, it sounded like OU had a decent crowd on hand....

There were 3 groups of red shirts - 30 of us who came on a bus, another group of 20/30 and the 15 or so in the "family and friends" seats behind the bench. The two "larger" groups were up in the second tier so if you heard us on the audio - you must be calling us REAL loud mouths. ;)

OU defense during the 1st half was great - the box score doesn't show defenseive rebounds by half but it seemed to me that OU created a lot of one and done's then.

Jackson was, obviously, stopped and it was sad to see a game without D being D.

[YemenBear]

There was some pretty vocal support for OU, particularly in the first half. Lead changed hands several times then. Either Sooners were loud and supportive or the OU faithful were near the broadcasters. At times during the action, I would hear crowd reaction and think Baylor did something well only to learn OU had hit a basket. I couldn't rely on crowd response to know what happened. Had to wait until announcers told me why there was cheering. So if OU numbers weren't large, those in attendance did an admirable job of voicing their support for the crimson & cream.

[BearLady]

Yemen, I think I saw a handful of OU fans (maybe 4 or 5) seated not far from the BU broadcasters, so you may have been hearing them. What caught my attention was the fact that there were any opponent's fans seated in that area, as you well know it's usually just the Lady Bears' fans. The crimson colors sure stood out admist the gold shirts!

sic 'em!


:bu:

[Gator]

Yemen, I think I saw a handful of OU fans

Bear Lady: I didn't take your seat # with me! All I remembered was "on the 45 yard line" and sorta near the floor. Somehow I decided not to stand near the four spots this would describe and Yell: Bear Lady? Where are you? I thought that maybe they might have straight jackers handy for folks who did something like that.

[BearLady]

Bear Lady? Where are you? I thought that maybe they might have straight jackers handy for folks who did something like that.

I doubt it, Gator! In fact, you might have gotten multiple responses from lots of different women!

For the record, my seats are on the bench side, just toward the Baylor end of the court.

Hope you all had a good trip! (ok, besides the obvious game outcome)

:bu:

[AngelSong20]

There is a significant problem with talking about disparity in foul-calling. You are operating under the assumption that no reason for such a disparity exists. This is a false and dangerous assumption to make. The problem is that there seems to be a tendency to believe that the number of fouls called should be about even for consistent officiating. However, if one team is intentionally playing aggressively (usually to neutralize the inside game) an attempt to even the calls will tip the scales heavily in the favor of the fouling team. Fouls should be called when they occur, regardless of other factors such as number of fouls already called, time left in game, score, etc.

[YCN]

There is a significant problem with talking about disparity in foul-calling. You are operating under the assumption that no reason for such a disparity exists. This is a false and dangerous assumption to make. The problem is that there seems to be a tendency to believe that the number of fouls called should be about even for consistent officiating. However, if one team is intentionally playing aggressively (usually to neutralize the inside game) an attempt to even the calls will tip the scales heavily in the favor of the fouling team. Fouls should be called when they occur, regardless of other factors such as number of fouls already called, time left in game, score, etc.

I'm not sure what post you are referring to, but my post regarding number of fouls was to explain that it is a prevalent occurrence that the home team will on average be called for fewer fouls, and that the disparity in fouls will amplify in terms of the number of free throws attempted by the two teams.

This can only fairly be compared during a conference season, because you are dealing with a finite subset of teams, all of whom play the same number of home and road games. The fact that home teams tend to average about 20-25% fewer fouls and about 30-35% more points from the free throw line as a result, is part of what I call the homecourt advantage, and it specifically does NOT indict the officials for unfair calls.

There are many different factors at work when a team goes on the road. Because home wins are easier for varying reasons than road wins, teams tend to press harder in games away from home, and that often results in more aggressive play than normal. The fact that somehow people think of road wins as "more important" than home wins only exacerbates the advantage.

When you couple a team less familiar with the surroundings with an anxiety borne of the belief that the win is somehow greater than one at home, you start the whole homecourt ball of wax rolling. When you add in more agitated head coaches, a home audience that tends to be negative toward game calls against the home team, the natural tendency of officials to try to minimize the controversy of their calls toward that audience...

Ah, nuts. Why bother with explanations. There are reasons why a team playing at home has an advantage, and that's all that needs to be said. I haven't been watching basketball for all these years for nothing. Teams playing at home win more often, which by definition means there is a homecourt advantage. How and why that advantage is gained will be a discussion that will never end.

And to sum up my thoughts on OU-Baylor, if OU deserved to win, they would have won. They didn't. You can debate the effects of home advantage from now until forever, but it does not change the fact that better teams tend to win wherever the game is played, while more closely matched teams tend to break home and home. Hopefully the Sooners will negate the Baylor home win with one of their own, but in playing such a talented and well-coached team, there are no givens.

[AngelSong20]

I am not sure that we have enough data to draw the conclusions that you are drawing here. I'm not disputing that there is a home court advantage, that seems relatively unquestionable. However, I am not convinced that the data you cite necessarily supports your thesis. As you point out, we can only use data from conference season, and herein lies the problem. We have only played about 1/4 of the games of the season. Are those games representative of the entire season? I would suggest that the data you provide has some curious features that may undermine your argument. Let's look at specifics.

This difference of +3.87 more fouls per game for the visiting teams yielded an average of +4.96 free throws. The games with the largest disparities thus far this year:

OSU fouled 26 times leading to 36 free throws, while Missouri fouled 16 times leading to 15 free throws.
Baylor out-fouled Nebraska just 33 to 25, but Nebraska shot 54 free throws compared to Baylor's 33.
A&M fouled 30 times to 19 for OU, leading to a 39-22 free throw advantage for the Sooners.
OU out-fouled Baylor 18-14, and Baylor shot 25 free throws to OU's 12.
OSU fouled 22 times, Texas 14. UT shot 24 FT's, OSU 13.
Texas Tech committed FEWER fouls than home team Colorado, 16-18, and shot 21 free throws compared to 11 for CU.

Notice the teams that are mentioned here. OSU appears in two of the extremes, both times on the side of the high foul count. This suggests to me that perhaps OSU is a team that fouls a lot, and thus the factor here is not so much location as team.

The Baylor-Nebraska game went into 3OT, which would increase any disparity that actually existed. To be fair in our comparison, we should really only count the 40 minutes of regulation, which might very well remove this game from the list.

Then we see 2 games with OU in which OU has a relatively low total of fouls. This would suggest again that perhaps TAMU has a tendency to foul, which again would skew our average on the basis of team. Furthermore, again we see a high number of fouls by the losing team in a match that was a bit unbalanced.

We also need to consider, as is demonstrated in the BU/OU game, that foul counts (and FTs) can be inflated by one team in the last few minutes when they are trying to slow the clock.

It seems to me that the evidence we have so far suggests that the disparity in fouls may result more from particular teams and game circumstances than the location of the games.

[YCN]

It seems to me that the evidence we have so far suggests that the disparity in fouls may result more from particular teams and game circumstances than the location of the games.

It's a given that home court means that on the average teams are called for fewer fouls. This isn't rocket science.

If you want me to give running totals during the season I can, I have the data. But this is nothing new.

Once again, I never said that a disparity of foul calls was a factor in OU losing, just that it is the accepted background of what happens when teams play on the road. If you deny the results of 23 games, then you will deny the inevitable disparity that will be shown by 96 games.

This happens every year in virtually every conference. There isn't anything to be seen here, this is where basketball is. That doesn't mean there is something sinister or underhanded going on. Instead, it simply reflects the circumstances that exist anywhere basketball is played.

You absolutely have to factor in where games are played because of that. In college football the home field advantage amounts to roughly 10%, so in basketball it may well be less than that. But to deny that such an advantage exists is just naive. It exists, and it will exist 100 years from now. Human nature is human nature, and time doesn't change it that fast at all.

[AngelSong20]

I'm not contesting that what you are posing is a possibility. What I am saying is that the evidence SO FAR this season does not necessarily support this theory. It very well may be the case that 96 games will show the trends of which you speak, but the ones you have listed so far have other factors present that may be skewing the results. It's not a matter of "denying the inevitable disparity," it's a matter of pointing out that the analysis so far seems a bit deficient. There very well may be other data to support your hypothesis that is not subject to the same observations I made about these games, but so far the argument is flawed because the evidence does not establish the conclusion.

[YCN]

I'm not contesting that what you are posing is a possibility. What I am saying is that the evidence SO FAR this season does not necessarily support this theory. It very well may be the case that 96 games will show the trends of which you speak, but the ones you have listed so far have other factors present that may be skewing the results. It's not a matter of "denying the inevitable disparity," it's a matter of pointing out that the analysis so far seems a bit deficient. There very well may be other data to support your hypothesis that is not subject to the same observations I made about these games, but so far the argument is flawed because the evidence does not establish the conclusion.

AngelSong, I've been watching basketball since before the 1960's, and home court advantage has always existed and likely always will. I don't want to demean what I believe to be your honest concerns that my stats are not comprehensive, but history has shown me that if you are playing at home you win more games. Whatever the reasons for that might be, I happen to be of the school that believes that some small percentage of that advantage comes from the officiating, and I emphasise "some small percentage".

The much larger advantage comes from the home crowd, the familiarity of the home team to the surroundings, and the lack of stress from not having to travel away from home.

I'll just leave it there. I want to say for about the 10th time that I never intended to say that unfair officiating had anything whatsoever to do with the Baylor win in Waco over Oklahoma. The entire discussion has somehow evolved over some thought that I was disparaging Baylor's performance against OU, and that was never my intention in the first place. I don't understand the antagonism that causes people to attack every nuance as a falsehood, every scant comment as a slur, every observation as painted in home colors.

I'm just not that way, and I'm not going to accept people thinking that way, regardless of the terms in which it is couched. For whatever reasons my original discusssion of this game has evoked negative responses toward what I did then and still now consider as valid considerations. But if anyone wants to try to goad me into saying something like "Baylor didn't deserve to win" you won't hear it from me.

Can we please let this conversation just focus around the issues I addressed, and not some inspirited defense of the team you support? This is just a bunch of games being played by a bunch of amateur athletes, athletes that happened to be good enough at their sport that they are now getting very inexpensive educations in part because of our monetary contributions.

Nothing about it is so important that it overrides the primary purpose of college sports, to create atmospheres of learning and growth that create productive citizens and potential leaders of the future for society.

I'd watch just for that, if nothing else.

[AngelSong20]

Hmmm.... we should maybe retitle this discussion "the perils of online communication" or "unintended subtext." I'm a huge Lady Raider fan, so trying to suggest anything about the BU/OU game was never any part of my intentions in responding to your post. I have been a bit concerned about the so-called foul disparity, especially after some discussion on the Raider Power board, so I did bring my own background and concerns into my initial post. However, I was never trying to suggest that home court advantage did or did not exist, and certainly not in that particular game. My only intention was to pose a different interpretation for the facts that you presented and point to some of the discrepancies I saw in the statistics. I thought I was trying to focus on issues, both those you presented and those that I presented -- and would like to continue that discussion, because I think we both make some good points. I'm not contesting that the long-term stats may very well support your thesis, because I haven't studied them that closely. I do think that the stats you give are interesting, but perhaps for other reasons as well.

[dem]

Nobody doubts that there is a huge home-court advantage in basketball, and few would claim that more than a small part of that advantage might have to do with the refereeing.

Personally, I would be interesting in looking at detailed stats of the type YCN analyzed. But, to eliminate at least the major sources of bias, it would (I believe) have to do the following:

(1) count only home-and-home games between paired teams, so each team gets counted both home and away with the same opponent. I would eliminate, for instance, North-South matchups in the Big 12. This is to eliminate bias caused by a team with high propensity for fouls (due to style of play) being counted disproportionately on the home or away side of the ledger. And I'd only count paired games, since teams do not generally play the identical style (fouling-wise) versus different teams.

(2) Truncate the data at around the two-minute-mark, to avoid counting fouling at the end of the game -- a potentially significant distortion.

(3) Compare statistics only for one season at a time among a given set of teams, since personnel and style of play evolve from year to year. Then, stats from each individual season could be cumulated and a "meta-analysis" performed on the full data set.

Not exactly one evening's work, even for dedicated Hoopscoopers. Nice little project, maybe, for a graduate student somewhere in search of a Master's thesis topic.