According to KenPom, Princeton is the 42nd luckiest team and the 86th best team, which suggests that some improvement will be needed to keep up the sterling record.
42 luckiest? How is that measured?
The technical explanation from KenPom:
The easiest one to understand is Luck, which is the deviation in winning percentage between a team’s actual record and their expected record using the correlated gaussian method. The luck factor has nothing to do with the rating calculation, but a team that is very lucky (positive numbers) will tend to be rated lower by my system than their record would suggest.
The shorter, practical answer as I understand it:
Teams that win lots of close games are considered “lucky.” After all, there will always be some level of variance from game to game. Which means a game won by 1pt could have easily been a loss if the other team made 1 more FT/shot, got one more foul call, etc.
Interesting to watch that last score by Abdullali; he and Pierce were together on the wing along the baseline. As Xavian dribble toward the hoop, Malik and Caden slowly worked in toward the hoop, but Caden went low and drew Woods to him; no one picked up Malik as he went a little higher to the middle of the lane and received the pass. That little jump shot he made requires touch and he nailed it.
The luck thing on KenPom isn’t just about how close the games are, although that is part of it. The ORating and DRating vs the opponent’s ratings generate a probability distribution of outcomes. If a team consistently outperforms the expected value of that distribution then it is “lucky.”