I changed my mind and I'm starting another new thread because there were a couple of interesting things in Bucky's basketball hour.
- He said "Tie game, one timeout, coming down the floor. In these situations, if you have the players you want on the floor, every mathematical model has showed you you should not to call a timeout here. You will score more likely than not in a tie game, if they tie it up and you have the ball, if you don't let them set their defense up. If you're down one you should call a timeout there." Said when you call a timeout, you're odds or scoring are below 40%, which is also why it's so popular to call timeout after you score to tie a game up as well. Thought that was interesting because I've never heard a coach actually reference some kind of large statistical study on that, seems like most of them kind of make that decision on vibes.
- Other thing that I mentioned in the other thread is that they weren't sure exactly how the rules were going to work at the end there on a possible review. At 1.1 seconds, SMU threw an inbounds pass that went the length of the court. We touched it and the clock should have run out (and Bucky said they knew that on the sidelines, which also means we can look at game video on the bench which I didn't know they could do now also.) But they weren't sure if they called a timeout there to set up an inbounds play if the officials would be able to go review it. The rule is supposed to be that out-of-bounds calls can only be reviewed if they're challenged, but SMU was out of timeouts. Bucky said he's wondered if a team could challenge a call without a timeout and just take a technical foul if they're wrong. (Though my guess is no, they couldn't do that, SMU would have had to have a timeout to initiate the challenge process.) But this situation is exactly the one I've been talking about that makes the new challenge rules so dumb. SMU could have lost the game there on an obviously wrong call because they didn't keep a timeout in their back pocket just in case the refs screw something up.