N.C.A.A. Tournament Live: Gonzaga, U.C.L.A. Men Cruise Into Sweet 16

It happened to Texas Tech in the second round of the men’s tournament on Sunday. Trailing by 2, and looking for an upset of third-seeded Arkansas, Kyler Edwards of Texas Tech drove to the basket and missed a layup with 3 seconds left.

It happened to Stephen F. Austin in the first round of the women’s tournament on Sunday. Down 2 in overtime, Avery Brittingham missed a layup and then a tip shot with one second on the clock, ending a bid to defeat fifth-seeded Georgia Tech.

The word “layup” has moved beyond basketball to be used as a term for anything that’s simple. “He really doesn’t have the ability or the willingness to unify us, because that would a layup,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in January about President Biden, while criticizing Biden’s approach toward Democrats considering whether to impeach his predecessor, Donald J. Trump.

But truthfully, a layup isn’t always a gimme, whether for President Biden or a supremely talented basketball player. It’s more like a 6-foot putt than a tap-in.

Even in the N.B.A., the home of the world’s best players, shots in the “restricted area,” four feet from the basket or less, go in at a rate ranging from 70 percent for the Miami Heat to 60 percent for the Charlotte Hornets.

The best college team in the country in converting shots “at the rim” has been Gonzaga, at only 73 percent before its second-round win on Monday, according to Hoop-Math. Many teams are down in the 60s or even the 50s.

A “layup” is usually defined as a shot coming from the side and using the backboard. Statistics specifically for layups are hard to come by, in part because there is no codified definition; the N.B.A. and Hoop-Math stats include other kinds of close-in shots as well. But N.C.A.A. players have been missing those other kinds of shots at key moments too.

With U.C. Santa Barbara trailing Creighton by 1 with 2 seconds left, Amadou Sow missed a close-in shot. The box score listed it as a layup, and it did go off the glass, but he didn’t exactly “lay” it there. That didn’t make the miss hurt any less.

The misses are all the more painful because many of the legendary shots of the N.C.A.A. tournament were, depending on how closely you define it, layups. Danny Ainge went coast to coast and ended with a finger roll floater to beat Notre Dame in 1981. Tyus Edney’s run against Missouri in 1995 ended with a shot from a few feet away.

When we think of a layup, we may think of a player sailing in uncontested to gently drop the ball off the glass and into the rim. But most of the time, layups are vigorously contested by defenders, making them a lot harder to execute than their name suggests.

Edwards of Texas Tech was defended closely by Justin Smith of Arkansas, who jumped with arm extended to foil the so-called easy shot. Several players surrounded Brittingham of Stephen F. Austin, all with their arms up as she shot.

Even the players, who make, and miss, layups every game tend to think of short shots as virtual sure things. “Amadou was wide open,” said JaQuori McLaughlin of U.C.S.B. “So I made the right pass right there, and he’s money in the paint.”

But he wasn’t. And that shouldn’t be such a surprise.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/22/sports/march-madness/