If this Kentucky team couldn’t do. WTH ever could?
The seasons today are so much longer. Kentucky 38-1. 39 games in a season is just insane.
Indiana went 32-0
I’ve learned my lesson. There’s no reason to get excited and hope for an undefeated season. Not when they are required to play so many games. Could Kentucky do the same thing next year? Absolutely. Except most of these guys are heading to the NBA and their fat juicy contracts. There’s no team loyalty to return and win that championship next year. They can’t build on the experience of this loss.
I predict now Indiana’s record will stand, for a long, long time. I can’t imagine any set of circumstances for it to fall.
As a parallel in soccer, Preston North End were undefeated in the inaugural 1888-89 season of the English Football League (22 games) . Everyone thought that record probably wouldn’t be equaled as for over 100 years no-one came close and the number of games increased significantly. However in the 2003-04 season of the Premiership (38 games) Arsenal became the second team in the history of the English top-flight football to have an unbeaten league season (though they didn’t come close to PNE’s record of being unbeaten in all competitions).
Statistically its not the same. to go 40-0 would be a much bigger accomplishment.
There’s always an element of luck in the outcome any game. No matter how skilled the team they can always lose on any given day. Thats why undefeated seasons are so rare and special. Basketball has extended their season so much that a perfect season is almost impossible. It does take away some excitement from the game. That hope that yes, this year we’ll see a team with a perfect season.
Could that Indiana team gone 40-0? I seriously doubt it. An injury or a key player having an off night would have tripped them up eventually. Even a lapse in concentration is all it takes to lose a game.
I would say the shot clock probably helps. Faster possessions means more possessions, which means more opportunities for the better team to take advantage of its superiority (basically, more samples). Cutting against that, the three point line definitely makes it harder for a team to go undefeated, since it introduces more variance to each possession. It’s too easy for an inferior team to get hot from deep and win.
Putting these two together, and you get the standard blueprint for NCAA upsets: slow the game down (to eliminate possessions) and shoot a lot of threes (to increase the variance). Fewer samples of a higher-variance process means that it’s more likely for the worse team to come out on top.
The changes to the game must have made it harder to win consistently. I noticed there were several perfect seasons in the 60’s and 70’s. Then they came to an abrupt halt. Duke has won 4 National Titles but never came close to a perfect season.
I only know of two that came close since Indiana did it. 1990–91 UNLV went 34-1, getting knocked out in the Final Four. Kentucky did the same thing. Went to the Final 4 and blew their chance.
Another factor has got to be the number of good players turning pro after one or two seasons. How can you build the chemistry needed to go undefeated when the best players keep leaving?
The schedule difference between 1975-76 Indiana (32 games) and 2014-15 Kentucky (40 games, if they had gone all the way) isn’t as great as it might appear.
Both teams played 18-game conference schedules, nine home and nine away. Indiana had to play five NCAA tournament games to win, whereas Kentucky would have had to win six. But, all five of Indiana’s games, in the then-24-team NCAA tournament, were against ranked teams. Kentucky had a first-round tap-in against Hampton.
Indiana played a nine-game non-conference schedule; Kentucky played 13. But, Indiana played four ranked teams, and the only games that could be considered tap-ins were Columbia and Manhattan in a holiday tournament. Kentucky played five ranked teams, but had tap-ins against Grand Canyon, Buffalo, Boston, Montana State, Texas-Arlington, Eastern Kentucky, and Columbia.
That’s not a knock on Kentucky, which overall played a tough non-conference schedule. It’s just the reality of college basketball scheduling in 2015. The primary cause of schedule inflation is additional home games ($$$) against crappy opponents.
The one major difference in schedule is that Kentucky had to play a conference tournament. Some conferences already played tournaments in 1976, but the Big Ten didn’t.
I don’t want to minimize the significance of the conference tournament–it’s a long, tough weekend of basketball against quality teams. But, it isn’t a difficulty which can’t be overcome.
There will be another undefeated team. The fact that recent contenders have fallen short is just a case of small sample size and bad luck.