Basketball analytics nerds are probably reveling in how mainstream sports data has become, and few examples are more prevalent than EvanMiya.
Founded by Evan Miyakawa, the site has become one of the most well-known sources for college basketball data. The site’s most popular measurement over the past few weeks is known as the “kill shot,” a measurement of how often teams rattle off a 10-0 run.
According to an explanation written by Miyakawa, teams that go on a 10-0 run during a game win 71% of the time. If a team can pull off two such runs in a single game, that win percentage jumps up to 86% of the time.
If you don’t end things at the halftime break, the Blue Devils were a victim of a kill shot against the Wolfpack on Thursday. After Duke led 32-30 with 1:30 to play before halftime, NC State scored the next 11 points over the next four minutes.
The end result? A 74-69 win for the Wolfpack, the difference decided in those handful of minutes.
Strangely enough, for a team as offensive as Duke, they seem better at preventing kill shots than enforcing them. A graph can be found on Miyakawa’s blog post, but the Blue Devils are one of the better teams in the nation at not allowing 10-0 runs, allowing less than 0.3 kill shots per game (adjusted for strength of schedule).
Duke doesn’t quite break off as many kill shots as some other top teams, averaging around 0.6 adjusted kill shots per game. Some national contenders like Connecticut, Tennessee, or Alabama are close to 0.7, and Houston is close to 0.75.
Either way, the Blue Devils are closer to the best corner of the graph than anywhere else.