So That Was Fun
I have this ongoing text thing with Kansas Game John (that's how I used to have him in my phone) where we are trying to will the luckiest season in the history of Illini football into existence. Last year, using 2nd Order Wins, Iowa was a 7.4-win team that won 10 games and Nebraska was a 7.0-win team that won 5 games. Two statistically similar teams. One team won 10 games, the other team won 5 games.
And those NERDstats pass the eye test, I think. Iowa had a 35% Postgame Win Expectancy against Nebraska and won 13-10, a 48% PGWE against Minnesota and won 12-10, and a 42% PGWE against us and won 15-13. And once Iowa played in games that a 10-2 team gets to play (the Big Ten Championship Game and the Citrus Bowl), they looked like... a 5-7 team. They lost to Michigan 26-0 and lost to Tennessee 35-0. Play their 12 games again with the same statistics and they're not coming anywhere close to 10-2 again.
That's what I mean by "luck." Everyone has lucky season and unlucky seasons. 2006 for Illinois was quite unlucky. 2007 for Illinois was quite lucky. That's not saying that the 2007 team wasn't great. It's simply saying that we went to the Rose Bowl instead of the Outback Bowl because we got some good fortune along the way.
I think of it in the same way as run differential in baseball. Right now the Cardinals are 72-71 with a run differential of -61 and the Reds are 70-75 with a run differential of +18. To me, that says there's a lot of "the Cardinals were outscored 21-9 in the weekend series but they went 2-1 because they won 4-3 and 3-1 on Friday and Saturday while losing 17-2 on Sunday" going on. Replay the series, spread the hits around (and move that reliever giving up seven runs in an inning and a third from Sunday's game to Friday's game) and there's a good chance the Cardinals get swept. Winning two and losing one is... quite fortunate.
And everyone has fortunate seasons and unfortunate seasons. The 2005 Cardinals won 100 games and didn't make the World Series. The 2006 Cardinals won 83 games and won the World Series. In that 2006 NLCS, the Mets scored 32 runs and the Cardinals scored 27 runs but the Cardinals won the series. It's not "oh my God how incredibly lucky", but it is "yeah, you had some things go your way when you win a series where you were outscored."
The thing John and I have been texting about all summer: why not an "oh my God how incredibly lucky" season? Don't we deserve one of those every now and then? All of the other Big Ten teams get to play in the sandbox. Can we play in the sandbox?
So when Mac Resetich fumbled the punt on Saturday night – with all of us watching the ball bounce around in the end zone and you sitting there thinking WHY DID ROBERT HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THE KYLE HUDSON GAME ON THURSDAY NIGHT? – I think you might have felt the same as I did when this...
...turned into 1st and 10 for Illinois at the 20. I had done the safety math AND the touchdown math before they signaled who had the ball, and then I didn't have to do any math. Because Kansas didn't touch it, it was still our ball (and it came out to the 20!).
I immediately texted John about the possibility the we're actually going to receive the lucky season of our dreams:
Go 80 yards we did. To take the lead. And then we forced a three-and-out. And then we put together a 6.5 minute drive to ice it. And we won a game with a 42.3% win expectancy.
That's not over-the-top luck, of course. It means that if we played this game with these statistics 100 times, Kansas wins 58 times and we win 42 times. But still, using the rain forecast thing I always talk about, if there's a 60% chance of rain, I'm typically surprised when it doesn't rain at all. Kansas had a 60% chance. And they lost.
I say all of that to say this:
