You're picking out a handful of shots in a game. Guys are going to hit tough shots, it happens. But if you think we lost to those teams because of "bad luck" we'll just have to agree to disagree. We played poorly and got beat, I don't think luck had anything to do with it and you do. We play to our ability in any of those upsets, and they don't happen. You look it as bad luck happening to us, I look it like we did it to ourselves by playing poorly.
Maybe I can say it a different way: In any of our losses to double digit seeds, do you think we played to our ability? Do you think we played well? Do you think CMP would say we played well? I'm saying NO to all of those and that's why I don't believe we lost because of bad luck.
Some people want to believe that luck is
never a factor, yet official statistical sites like KenPom actually attempt to quantify luck in their analyses.
There are so many soul-crushing losses in our NCAAT history. Each one has a different story and reason for our demise. For the record, I never said that our losses to double digit seeds were due to luck. I was referring only to UVA and ALR. Even Boiler Deac insinuated that luck was at play against UVA.
Here's my official take on all the losses discussed in this thread:
Arkansas Little Rock -- Luck
UVA -- Luck
North Texas -- Youth (we were among the youngest teams in the NCAA that year) vs a veteran team
St. Peters -- An ugly combination of Ivey's obstinance
and awful reffing
FDU -- A combo of poor offensive execution, freshmen guards hitting the "wall"
and not taking the competition seriously
To answer your question more broadly, when I claim that "luck" is why we lost in those first two instances, I am not merely taking a reductionist view and blaming an isolated factor. I try to look at a whole host of things when analyzing a loss, and generally speaking it is comes down to an aggregate of little things that contributed to our downfall.
That said, there is usually a
major contributing factor that sticks out more than the others. It comes down to a matter of opinion at that point, but "luck" is
certainly one of those factors.