The safety at 13:37

For those of you who are not familiar with Bill James, he is widely considered to be the grandfather of modern baseball statistical analysis. Guys you have heard of (Billy Beane) or things you might have heard of (Moneyball) are present due to James' work. We're talking advanced statistics here, VORP, Win Shares, ERA+... not batting average.

Well, James has at some point ventured into the basketball forum as he came up with a statistic to tell when a lead is "safe". Thought being that, at some point, there is too many points to overcome how many possessions would theoretically be left in the ballgame. Or, simply put, the combination of plays for a team to come back either takes more time than is left on the clock or would occur with a 0% probability.

I ran into this statistic at the following link [http://www.slate.com/id/2185975/]. Unfortunately, when I use the game data from Saturday [http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=290172181], I find that at 13:37 left in the second half, the 33 point lead that existed (61-28) was so much given the time left it statistically was insurmountable.

While it seems like I'm trying to pour salt in our wounds here, I thought this was too cool of a tool to not use for the recent situation. I think results seem about right. With about 10 minutes left in the game, I remember thinking it was definitely already out of hand.

A few other tidbits I noticed that I'm going to use for future reference:

• Technically, a 10 point lead with 1:00 to go is not insurmountable. In fact, it is only 70% safe according to James (which I find that to be a little bit low). If there is a minute left, 12 points is the bogey to use for calling the game.
• Got a 20 point lead? Need to get it within five minutes left. Technically, you need to get it to about 4:30.
• Up by 39 or more at half? Tell the teams to not come back out. That's 100% safe, which I think would be fair to say. If we're talking about a 58-19 halftime score, I think in that instance the home team is responsible for starting to file out the attending fans early to save the traffic pattern.

Maybe this would have saved Billy Packer from looking like such an idiot last year.