Get An OT, Baby!

Unless there’s a 9 PM start, and sometimes even then, overtime games are a pleasant bonus. You get more action, more entertainment, more drama than normal. As long as you’ve fought the traffic to come to the arena, or set aside the time to view the game at home, you might as well enjoy all the basketball you can.

Overtime contests also are relatively rare – an average of a little more than nine per season since 2014. They’re an occasion.

For the teams involved the overtime period may offer either a chance at redemption or represent an undesirable risk. Either way, the five-minute extra session has the air of sudden death, the clock’s expiring time somehow offering a guarantee of finality more intense than regulation play.

That may be just an illusion, but it’s how it feels.

This season has seen less than the usual number of overtime games for the post-expansion era – seven, with barely a month left counting postseason tournaments.

Boston College is 0-3 in overtime, including a loss at NC State that’s contributed to the Eagles’ continued tenancy in the ACC’s bottom half.

Florida State is 2-0 in overtime in 2019, beating LSU and Louisville, both ranked at the time they played. Louisville is 1-3, its sole victory in extra time against Michigan State and one of its losses at Pitt.

Since expansion in 2014, the ACC’s best cumulative overtime records belong to Notre Dame (9-3, .750), which hasn’t endured an OT yet in ’19; Pitt at 11-4 (.733), with that 2019 win over the Cards and a loss at Wake; and Virginia Tech (9-4, .672), yet to reach overtime this season.

Pitt has played more overtime games than anyone else (15) since 2014.

Worst cumulatively for the six post-expansion years are Georgia Tech (3-6) and Wake (2-4), both with .333 success rates that trail the rest of the ACC.