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Message: [QUOTE="Waltdods, post: 2665747, member: 2932"] A team that goes 8-2 in the last 10 probably has a better record than a team that goes 2-8. But if the records are the same, I suspect there ain't much difference in the tournament showing. To test this, you could regress tournament results on last-10 games, controlling for seed. I won't do that! But just looking at the last several Syracuse NCAA teams: Last year the team was pretty consistently mediocre throughout. 5-5 in the last 10, which is more or less consistent with what they were all season. Can't take much either way from it. In 2015-16, the team was terrible down the stretch, losing 5 of their last 6. They had one win in the month before the NCAA started. They went to the Final Four. Score one for the whole body of work. In '13-14, the team was again pretty bad down the stretch, losing 5 of 7. Obviously, that team fell off a lot from the early season successes. It was one win and out. Arguably, this is a point in favor of late season performance mattering, although I think the overall record was also pretty telling. 12-13 is a bit of a weird one. SU had a great BET after a terrible end to the regular season. That Georgetown loss at the Dome to end the season was about as bad a basketball performance as you'll see. Not sure what to do with this one, though again I think the whole body of work was a pretty good benchmark for what SU ended up doing - that was a very good team that hit some weird stretches. '11-12 was great all the way through. (So many W's!) '10-11 was very good down the stretch - won the last 6 regular season games and 8/10. Went one and out. Would say the whole season was more telling than the end stretch. 09-10 was great all season, though actually did stumble a bit at the end of the year - dropping the last game of the regular season and of course the AO game in the BET. Not sure you can take much from this year either way in light of that injury. People massively over-react to short-term trends in college basketball. Barring injury, I'm just not sure that running off an 8-game winning streak in late February/early March tells you anything more than the same in December/January (obviously, not counting the early season nonconferecne games). [/QUOTE]

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