I'm frankly stunned that, given this many opportunities at close games, we haven't simply lucked into winning one by now.
It almost defies the law of averages for a team to keep playing hard and continue losing in such soul-crushing fashion.
I know what you mean. I watched the last 2 minutes of regulation and we got soooo many offensive rebounds that one would have thought, surely one of these will go in. Actually Copes' did make a put back to put us ahead by 3 with a minute left, but we really put ourselves in position to win this game. And on Jalen's last second miss, Copes had his hands on the ball as the buzzer was going off and might have had yet another put back.
Other than the turnovers, I couldn't have hoped for a more well-played game by our guys. No droughts, shot better than 50% against the best defensive team in the country, out-rebounded them. I certainly hope the team keeps playing with as much energy as they showed today.
I've been looking at Ken Pomeroy's data and in addition to his offensive and defensive efficiency rankings, he has a "Luck" category:
Luck - A measure of the deviation between a team’s actual winning percentage and what one would expect from its game-by-game efficiencies. It’s a Dean Oliver invention. Essentially, a team involved in a lot of close games should not win (or lose) all of them. Those that do will be viewed as lucky (or unlucky).
Going into today's game, Mason was 295th out of 351 (toward the "unlucky" end). I imagine after today's game we'll fall even further toward the unlucky end.