[stupac2]

I think there are a couple things happening here. First, before the season we typically have a poll of what people expect to finish (I couldn't find one from this year, but we definitely have in the past) and the median result is usually 8-4 or 9-3. If you actually try to handicap probabilities of winning and guess our record (as some posters do, and predictors like Connelly do) then you usually end up right in that range. So, in some sense, a season like this one is what we typically expect given our schedule and various uncertainties associated with the season.

Then we actually play the games. Instead of a level-headed "well yeah winning in Seattle is hard, we'll probably lose" we see how we lose and say "we could've won if not for..." and feel like we should've won. Suddenly those pre-season predictions of 8-4 or 9-3 fade from memory and we all wonder why we're not going 12-0 every year. After all, if it weren't for this play and that play...

Of course, you never do that in the other direction, flip the various close wins to losses, so it just feels like we underperformed. But we didn't. We did basically as well as you would've expected before the season. And, frankly, if you had known before the season that we'd be a walking MASH unit the whole season you'd probably think finishing 9-4 would be a miracle. But, again, it's hard to feel that way knowing how close we were in several of those games.

[stupac2]

I think there are a couple things happening here. First, before the season we typically have a poll of what people expect to finish (I couldn't find one from this year, but we definitely have in the past) and the median result is usually 8-4 or 9-3. If you actually try to handicap probabilities of winning and guess our record (as some posters do, and predictors like Connelly do) then you usually end up right in that range. So, in some sense, a season like this one is what we typically expect given our schedule and various uncertainties associated with the season.

Then we actually play the games. Instead of a level-headed "well yeah winning in Seattle is hard, we'll probably lose" we see how we lose and say "we could've won if not for..." and feel like we should've won. Suddenly those pre-season predictions of 8-4 or 9-3 fade from memory and we all wonder why we're not going 12-0 every year. After all, if it weren't for this play and that play...

Of course, you never do that in the other direction, flip the various close wins to losses, so it just feels like we underperformed. But we didn't. We did basically as well as you would've expected before the season. And, frankly, if you had known before the season that we'd be a walking MASH unit the whole season you'd probably think finishing 9-4 would be a miracle. But, again, it's hard to feel that way knowing how close we were in several of those games.