I have a few things on my mind this week…

Stipendous

Penn State recently announced that it would be paying a $4,788 stipend to athletes in certain sports, a figure that ranks them atop the Big Ten. The amount reflects the university’s calculation of incidental expenses students pay when attending the school.

Wisconsin ($4,265) and Nebraska ($3,544) are numbers two and three in the conference. Michigan State ($1,872) is last in the conference. Other schools and other conferences will be announcing their plans soon.

The stipends are supposed to reflect the full cost of attending a school including incidentals over and above tuition, room, and board. Clearly “incidentals” has different meaning at different schools.

The stipends grew out of the O’Bannon Case as well as other litigation that is in progress. The O’Bannon case went to trial last summer after years of motions and discovery. The plaintiffs’ claim that the athletes should control their name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights instead of the schools prevailed. If you did not follow the case as it unfolded, I recommend reviewing it. I thought Sports Illustrated’s coverage of the trial itself was pretty good.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled in favor of former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon and 19 others who sued the NCAA. Her ruling required schools to direct some of the money generated by their media contracts into a trust fund to pay athletes when they leave school.

To stave off further losses in court, NCAA members passed a series of changes that included the full cost-of-attendance stipend that is being implemented now.

It’s about time, and it’s a shame that it took litigation to make it happen.

I don’t mean to diminish the value of a free college education; but even private school tuition and expenses don’t begin to reflect the economic value that football and, to a lesser but still significant extent, basketball players create for their institutions. Top football programs make in excess of $40 million profit for their schools. Coaches earn millions.

A $4,000 annual stipend and a modest trust fund to use after graduation is the least Division 1 schools can do. Perhaps some of the athletes will use to money on the educations they didn’t get when they were in school.

Overtime

It has become cliché to joke about how many overtimes Notre Dame and Louisville will play when they square off in the Yum! Center tonight. Six of their last ten games have required at least one extra period, and it was six of eight at the end of the 2012-13 season that included ND’s famous five overtime victory. UL did not lose again in 2013.

As heated as the games have been, there never has been animosity between the teams; and I find that refreshing. There are no cheap shots on or off the court. The coaches and the players respect each other.

Overtime in tonight’s game would most likely mean that the Irish played well; and playing well is what this teams needs to start doing consistently.

When I wrote about the Story of the Season a few weeks ago, it was crisis time. The Irish had lost to Pitt and were blown out by Duke. The season was taking a bad turn.

The close victory at Clemson stopped the bleeding, but the Irish were no better than okay that night. Easy victories over Wake Forest and Boston College eased the pressure, but both teams are conference bottom feeders. Then came the Syracuse game with the bad, a struggling offense against the zone, and the good, an ability to stay in a game when not playing well.

There only are two games left in the regular season, so it would be a mighty fine time to start playing well again.

Close games

Close games and overtime games have been good for the Irish both this season and for several years. When Notre Dame defeated Miami in mid-January, its record in close games (defined as either overtime or decided by two scores or less) was 5-2 this season.

Since the Miami game, the Irish have won close games against North Carolina State (81-78 in overtime), Duke (77-73), and Clemson (60-58). They lost close games to Pittsburgh (72-76), and Syracuse (60-65). That brings ND’s close game record to 8-4, the same two to one success (34-17) rate it has enjoyed over the last five years.

There is a lot of statistical analysis suggesting that luck is a substantial factor in winning close games. Ken Pomeroy explains his Luck statistic like this:

A measure of the deviation between a team’s actual winning percentage and what one would expect from its game-by-game efficiencies. It’s a Dean Oliver invention. Essentially, a team involved in a lot of close games should not win (or lose) all of them. Those that do will be viewed as lucky (or unlucky).

In other words, luck explains deviation from a team’s general efficiency or lack of it. It does not mean that the outcomes in close games are entirely random. It does not diminish the role of skill and execution.

Luck is Steve Vasturia making a three point shot from the corner to give Notre Dame a four point lead and some breathing room with 0:22 left to play against Duke just as luck is Vasturia missing the same open shot from the corner that would have given the Irish the lead over Pitt with 0:06 left to play. Skill is the execution that found Vasturia open and catching a perfect pass so he could take the shot.

Execute well and hope for the best. Consistently good execution leads to consistently better outcomes.

Consider Iowa State’s recent loss to K-State in the game that got me thinking about this.

Up one with 18 seconds left and in-bounding the ball on the side in the backcourt, ISU’s Georges Niang threw a terrible pass that led KSU’s Wesley Iwundu right to the basket for a dunk.

Now leading by a point, KSU let Iowa State bring the ball up court and gave its sixth foul with 4.8 seconds left, ISU had to throw in from its offensive baseline. There was plenty of time to get the ball to a potential scorer who would be reasonably close to the basket. The ball was already at the baseline. Get it in bounds, and you have a contest between offensive player and defensive player to decide the game.

Unfortunately for the Cyclones, the passer overthrew the pass all the way to the backcourt. By the time Naz Long reoriented his momentum after chasing down the ball, there only was time for a desperation heave from 35 feet.

All ISU had to do to avoid a regulation loss was get the ball in bounds with 18 seconds left, accept the inevitable KSU foul, and make free throws. Luck might have been in play at the free throw line, but skill never got Iowa State that far; and even after that failure, a failure of execution deprived ISU of a decent last chance.

Execution in tight games, good or bad, diminishes the influence of luck.