So we were already thinking about this Saturday while reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” (Yeah, we’re a couple of years behind on our reading). Rather than shovel snow or do laundry or even make another plate of nachos, we started thinking about the section in which he talks about paralysis by analysis as it pertains to sports. One example he uses pertains to timeouts in basketball, particularly at the ends of games. Without having the book in front of us, we can’t remember the exact wording, but he made a quick case for not calling a time out in a key situations — let the offense play, let the players rely on their repetitions in practice and their intuition, and you will get a better result. Now, in real game situations, it’s not always that easy. But as luck would have it, there was an example Sunday. Ohio State scored with about four seconds left to go up by one point against Wisconsin, and the Badgers called a time out to set up a final play. The resulting shot was hardly terrible: Kammron Taylor had a look from 15 feet that was blocked. But would the Badgers have been better off just going in the flow of the game before the Buckeyes had a chance to set their defense? We threw the question at resident college hoops expert Jeff Shelman and offered him a guest post, but we get the feeling he likes blogs only slightly more than Patrick Reusse. Shelman did say the amount of time left makes a difference to him, and it was a good argument. Maybe with 10 seconds left, calling a time out is a good idea. Maybe with five seconds or less, you’re better off just going on instinct. Maybe it should be the other way around (though we disagree).

In any event, this situation is likely to arise many times in key games in the coming weeks, with conference tournaments and then the NCAA tournament taking center stage (by the way, we’re kicking around the idea of a RandBall/commenter NCAA bracket pool, with the winner getting a deluxe prize package including one guest post a week for a month and perhaps a “2005 Houston Astros: The Championship Season” DVD).

What do you think: Time out at the end of the game or not? And is there sufficient interest to do a bracket contest?

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