Someone needs to tell R.C. Johnson to quit saying words

I somehow skimmed past this quote (poorly-chosen, self-incriminating phrases in bold) from Memphis athletic director R.C. Johnson when I read the Dozier story earlier:

"We still feel comfortable about what we've done and that we've done all the do-rights, and time will tell. You don't want any of that stuff happening, but I'm pretty comfortable we've done all the things we're supposed to do."

Johnson added, "I thought we dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's on that situation. I know nothing different today than I did then."

Is his guilty conscience subconsciously forcing him to sabotage Memphis's chances of avoiding punishment? He might as well just say, "Oh crap, I thought we shredded all that stuff."

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Of all the pictures they could've chosen...

Anyhoo... Um, yeah, Memphis was pretty crooked, methinks.

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Exhibit 5.3, please

Call me a cynic, but I'm not 100% convinced by University of Memphis Athletics' specious self-proclamations of innocence:

Of course, Exhibit 5.3 (i.e. what the forensic document examiner actually said, as opposed to an eleven-word snippet with the lone indication of uncertainty underlined) was not released to the press.

Admittedly, I'm not a forensic document examiner, but I find it highly unlikely that a forensic document examiner was unable to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the handriting sample from the test was a mismatch for Rose's handwriting. 

What I'd expect, if we could read Exhibit 5.3, is that the only rationale for the word "probably" are a handful of overwrought hypotheticals that could possibly sorta maybe explain away the difference.

Like a lot of people, I don't really care if Rose cheated. He'd have never had to take the test if not for the NBA's / NCAA's backwards, exploitative rules. I also hope the accusations are untrue.

That said, University of Memphis Athletics must think we're all stupid. That, and they really need to clean up that women's golf program.

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Self-incrimination?

Word choice is important:

Memphis athletic director R.C. Johnson on Thursday defended the men's basketball program. "We wouldn't play anybody if we hadn't checked it out pretty thoroughly," Johnson told The Associated Press.

If you ask me, that could very easily be interpreted as, "There was, in fact, something worth checking out--which is to say that we knew something was up, and we checked it out. We kinda-sorta did some investigating, but only enough to help us sleep a little easier, not enough to actually turn up any hard evidence of misconduct that could have forced us to sit one of our players--especially not if it was Derrick Rose."

If the accusations were totally baseless, I would expect him to say something like, "We would never allow one of our athletes to play if we were aware of any misconduct or violations on the part of that player."

Ok, maybe I'm reading too much into this.

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Why Memphis needs to change conferences, in plain black and white (with a little red scribble)

Yowsah:

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More bogus stats: Was John Calipari full of shit?

Ok, so this is a couple days north of relevant, but a few nagging questions have been on my mind since Monday, namely:

1. What did I do with my Brewers floppy hat?
2. Do all of my friends secretly hate me?
3. Is the roach poison in my apartment slowly giving me cancer?
4. Who's that actor in that one movie, and where do I know him from?
5. Will I die alone?
...and most importantly,
6. Was Memphis actually able to hit their free throws "when they counted," as John Calipari claimed they would, or was it just random chance that they improved in the NCAA Tournament?

So far, I've concluded, 1. Check your "hat shelf," dumbass, 2. Probably, but I might be paranoid, 3. I won't live forever anyway, 4. bit part on Home Improvement!, 5. In a sense, we all do, and 6. Let's look at the numbers!

So I went to this sweet Z-Score for two proportions calculator and sought my answer.

Here's the problem: I'm not totally sure if this is the right statistical test for the situation because 11th-grade stats was a long time ago. But if it is the right test, here's what I found.

I plugged in the pre-tourney sample of 495 makes in 830 attempts (59.6%) and compared it to Memphis's free throw stats from their first five tourney games (113-161, good for 70.2%).

The result? A 1.5% chance that the improvement was a result of pure random chance and not some tangible factor, i.e. motivation.

But here's the hitch: In Game One against Doormat U., the Tigers shot a very un-Dana Barros-like 22-35 (62.85714%). And in Game Two--their closest game prior to the final--against Mississippi St., they shot a very Chris Dudley-like 15-32 (46.875%).

(And by the way, to reaffirm how awesome I am with numbers, those were mentally-generated percentages... Check me with a calculator if you dare.)

So... Giving Memphis the benefit of the doubt--i.e. that rounds one and two only require concentration from sucker teams, even when it's a close game--their games 3-5 total comes out to 76-94 (80.9%).

The result:

There's less than a 0.1% chance that the 21.3% difference between pre-tourney Memphis and games 3-5 Memphis was a fluke.

In conclusion: John Calipari was, at most 1.5% full of shit. And CDR is a worthless choker for costing me money in my office pool. And you don't care about any of this. And I still can't find my floppy hat. Where is my fucking floppy hat?

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