A Statistical Analysis to Improve Basketball Strategy

Decision-making and competitive strategies in major American sports have often relied on heuristics and conventional wisdom. Recently, statistics and quantitative methods have been used in the sport of baseball to help teams improve their chances of winning. However, the use of mathematical methods to improve strategy has not been as prevalent in sports such as basketball. In this paper, we discuss a strategy based on statistical information that improves a team's probability of winning. In particular, we claim that the expected benefit of the strategy proposed could have affected the outcome of 17.5% of the 2004 NCAA tournament games.