Quantifying the effect of coaching can be incredibly difficult and at least in my opinion it’s far more nuanced than the win-loss records that often serve as the final word in evaluating coaching quality.
Much of what a coach does isn’t seen by fans simply watching a game. The countless hours spent watching film and preparing strategy aren’t shown on ESPN and even when the lights are on viewers aren’t privy to every decision and play call directed by the head coach.
One thing that everyone sees and is almost always criticized by fans and broadcasters alike is the strategy related to calling timeouts. The timing of when a timeout is called (or not called) is the one decision by a coach that everyone is aware of and for that reason strategy related to calling timeouts is something that always seems to be a topic of conversation.
The art of calling a timeout is elusive and hasn’t always been viewed as a scientific study. Everyone knows coaches usually want to call a timeout to stop a run by the other team but much of that is lore without data to really back it up. That was, of course, until I came across the work of a data scientist named Luke Benz who wrote a paper titled “An Examination of Timeout Value, Strategy, and Momentum in NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball.” In this masterpiece he studied literally thousands of games and found that called timeouts most definitely do have an impact on scoring runs within a game.
What strategy has Mike White used when it comes to his four timeouts per game and how effective has he been in calling them? A study was necessary.
The Question
When it comes to calling timeouts how much do they really change momentum? You’ll probably hear the word momentum thrown out a lot here because when it comes to a coach’s decision to use a timeout with the exception of late game scenarios when they want to draw up a special play they are almost always used to stem the tide of an opposing team’s onslaught. If Coach White was using his timeouts effectively we should see negative momentum from a Gators’ standpoint turned to positive momentum, at least more times than not if we’re lucky.
The Process
To start, I charted every timeout that Florida called last season in Florida’s games against Power 6 opponents plus Nevada. I didn’t want the mid-major games to skew the data of what Coach White would do in games that mattered more and were closer so I kept it to the big-time opponents (31 games total). The time on the clock was marked down, and then I started looking at momentum. To do so, I looked at the previous three minutes before each timeout and noted who was on a run and how much that run was. For example, if Florida’s opponent was on a 7-2 run in the three minutes leading up to the timeout I would mark it as a -5 run. Then, I looked at the three minutes following the timeout to see what run occurred next, i.e. if the Gators went on an 8-2 run it would be marked as a +6 run.
That was, of course, only for timeouts that occurred in the first 37 minutes of a game. When it came to timeouts in the last 3 minutes I looked at the prior 2 possessions and the 2 possessions that followed a timeout to see the effectiveness there. I will have more on this later.
By looking at runs before and after timeouts we can see just how effective that timeout was. If the Gators were the victim of a -6 run before a timeout and then went -4 afterwards it wouldn’t be considered a positive timeout but if they were -5 before a timeout and +5 afterwards it would be a successful one.
Let’s start by the trends of when Coach White called timeouts.
Timing
Looking at the timing of each timeout called there are definitely some trends that are instantly noticeable.
First, Coach White is all about keeping his powder dry and not burning timeouts early, instead holding on to them for later game scenarios. Florida’s opposition was the first team to call a timeout in almost every game this season and that extended to the second half as well where Coach White was almost never the first coach to use one. In the 31 games that qualified for this study Florida only called 27 first half timeouts and 7 of them were in the final minute where White used them to draw up an offensive play (a note on this will appear later in the article!).
Considering he also didn’t call many timeouts in the first 10 minutes of the second half White almost always had more timeouts than the other team in the final three minutes of a game and that was where he really liked to use them. One interesting strategy that White employed in the final minute is that he loved to use a timeout after a made bucket by the Gators. Many coaches prefer to use their timeouts in the final minute when they have the ball to draw up a play to score but Coach White much preferred to score and then call a timeout to slow the pace of the opponent.
My overarching note on White’s strategy is that he isn’t someone that actively uses his timeouts to swing momentum. He’s a coach that likes to let his players play through adversity in the middle of games and he would much rather hold onto his timeouts for late game scenarios where he can control the tempo of the game.
How effective of a strategy is this? Let’s take a look.
Tracking Timeouts And Momentum
Let’s get into the data I assembled earlier on Florida’s timeout usage and see what we can extract.
To do this let’s look exclusively at the timeouts in the first 37 minutes of the game. These are the timeouts that are clearly called with momentum in mind. I’m also going to eliminate the 7 timeouts that Coach White used in the final minute of the first half as those ones weren’t used with the intention of stopping a run and changing momentum, they were more an opportunity to orchestrate on final good shot in the half.
In total there were 56 timeouts that met that criteria.
Of those 56, 45 were called when Florida was currently on a negative run, getting outscored by their opponents in the previous 3 minutes.
Now ideally the timeout called by Florida would stop those runs and in the 3 minutes to follow Florida would be on a positive run (or tie their opponent in those minutes). If Florida stopped a run by their opponent and then had a positive run (or equal score) in the 3 minutes afterwards it would be considered a successful timeout.
Of the 45 timeouts Coach White called to stop the momentum of a surging opponent, 27 of them were successful. That’s a 60% success rate when it comes to entirely turning around the momentum of a game and when you think about it, that’s a really awesome number.
Not only were the Gators totally successful with 60% of their momentum changing timeouts but there were still positive outcomes in many of the other 40% of timeouts. Of the 18 timeouts that weren’t entirely successful the Gators still improved their runs (for example, they were -7 in the three minutes before a timeout and -2 in the three minutes after, so still a noticeable improvement) in 12 of them (or 27% of the total timeouts). While they still lots the minutes after the timeout I won’t call them “successful” timeouts, but I’ll call them “positive” timeouts.
Put it all together and the Gators were successful or had positive outcomes on 87% of their timeouts in the first 37 minutes of a basketball game. That is a staggering number that shows just how absurdly valuable timeouts are and how they can change the momentum of a game.
Those were the timeouts that related to momentum but what about the timeouts Coach White used just to draw up a play like in the final minutes of a game?
Crunch Time Timeouts
There were 36 timeouts called by the Gators in crunch time last season. Timeouts at the end of games are often considered to be of utmost importance and considering that Coach White often saved multiple timeouts for the final minutes of games he treats them like gold.
The Gators struggled in close games last season and the difficulty they had scoring the ball at times really bit them in the final minutes of games. The Gators were at 0.83 points per possession on plays coming after timeouts and that was actually worse than their average 0.869 PPP on half court offensive possessions.
Instead of just looking at the immediate play that followed a Florida timeout in the clutch I looked at the two plays following, allowing for both an offensive and defensive possession. If Florida had more points than their opponent (i.e. they scored a layup and their opponent missed) it would be a positive outcome, if the reverse happened it was a negative outcome, and if they tied in points it was an equal outcome.
When it comes to the 36 crunch time timeouts Florida had, the numbers are pretty surprising.
They had 9 positive outcomes, 11 negative outcomes, and 16 equal outcomes.
It’s clear Florida didn’t do particularly well in late game scenarios and that’s no shocker but when you look at the effect of these timeouts…well it seems like maybe there wasn’t much of an effect.
Wait, when it comes to using timeouts to draw up one or two possessions we have another sample size, the 7 timeouts used in the final minute of the first half of games. Those plays are similar to the late game scenarios where the timeout is being used for one shot and that way we can see if Florida did particularly worse in late game after timeout scenarios or not.
Of those 7 timeouts they scored 3 times, all 2-point buckets. That’s 0.857 PPP, or still slightly worse than their season average half court PPP of 0.869.
Takeaways
Timeouts are a valuable asset, a finite resource within a basketball game. Basketball is a game of markets (shout out to Joseph Gill for the phrase) and maximizing timeouts isn’t something you often hear talked about. Really, it should.
So let’s look at the way Coach White used timeouts a lot of the time, and that’s scenarios where he wants to draw up one or two possessions (late game or in the final minute of the first half).
Like I mentioned earlier the outcomes following crunch time timeouts for the Gators weren’t that great. 9 positive outcomes, 11 negative outcomes, 16 neutral outcomes. Considering these were the most important plays in the late stages of tight games it’s not like you would expect the Gators to have wildly positive outcomes but when you look across the results I would say the effect of the timeouts were… perhaps negligible?
Instead of just looking at timeouts in the final three minutes of the game let’s look at ultimate crunch time, the final minute of a game. I went back and tracked every offensive and defensive possession that followed a Florida timeout in the final minute of a game.
Offensively, following a timeout the Gators were at 0.625 points per possession. That is not very good and it’s well below their half court average of 0.869. Yes, you’d expect defenses to really clamp down in the final minutes of games and therefore PPP should go down but this is a major step backwards.
Defensively, when the Gators were defending following one of their called timeouts they gave up 1.0 PPP. As you can imagine, that is much worse than their normal defense and not a good number at all.
Those numbers show that the Gators weren’t great coming out of timeouts in the clutch, but that was the time that Coach White liked to really save his timeouts for.
Now let’s look back at the numbers for momentum changing timeouts, the timeouts called to stop runs by their opponent. To recap, 60% of the time the Gators stopped a run by their opponents and went on a run of their own and 27% of the time they drastically slowed the run of their opponent.
87% of the time there was a positive outcome for the Gators with a momentum shifting timeout call.
Remember how I talked about basketball being a game of markets and timeouts and an asset in limited supply? Let’s think about return on investment.
For the Gators, late game timeouts didn’t actually seem to help a lot. You could get into hypothetical situations where maybe things could have gone astronomically worse if they didn’t call a timeout but when you look at the actual results of what happened the numbers would suggest the timeouts in crunch time had a negligible effect. One could even argue their made for a negative effect with both their offensive and defensive PPP lowering in crunch time after a Florida timeout. I’m not sure I would go that far and Florida’s sample could be a bit of an anomaly but when you actually look at the numbers I think there’s a good chance that Florida would perform equally well in some late game scenarios without a timeout.
If the Gators didn’t call a timeout ran a late game offensive possession would their numbers be worse than 0.625 PPP? Maybe, but I think there’s a good chance it might be even closer to their regular half court average of 0.869.
When it came to momentum shifting timeouts the numbers were tremendously successful for the Gators with 60% extremely successful timeouts and 87% positive timeouts. Now THAT is a return on investment.
What I’m getting at is that if you really want the best bang for your buck when it comes to timeouts the value seems to be there with momentum shifting timeouts versus late game timeouts. The timeouts Coach White called to stop a run had tremendous success throughout the entire season and those returns simply aren’t there with late game timeouts. I’m not saying you should never call a late game timeout as that would be foolish but I really do think Coach White should consider using his timeouts earlier to stop momentum instead of saving them for potential late game scenarios.
I would also suggest the elimination of the timeout in the last minute of the first half Coach White sometimes liked to use. Like I mentioned earlier those after timeout plays in the final minute of the first half only netted 0.857 PPP and once again, that’s just not a great return on investment when they have been so successful used at other times to swing momentum in Florida’s favor.
A lot of coaches, Mike White included, will like to have 2 timeouts remaining in for the crunch time of games. Seeing how much more effective momentum shifting timeouts are than late game timeouts I really think Coach White should consider using timeouts earlier and not be afraid of going into clutch time with only one timeout.
Conventional basketball wisdom is changing constantly and I think timeout strategy might be next on the forefront of how the game changes. When you view timeouts as commodities you invest and what to get the best return on I think the results here are clear, at least in the Gators case.