True Maroon

Pasting what I wrote on the Pack because it is applicable here as well with all the discussion about whether to pitch Stratton or hold him...

It's a popular opinion that losing game 1 or 2 are identical, under the reasoning that the same number of games are played either way. My baseball background left me with a feeling that disagreed with this, although I'd never conclusively researched it. So, I looked at the numbers to either prove or deny it.

Since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1999, there have been 208 regionals played.
- 40 have been won by teams that lost either their first or second game. (19%)
- Of these 40 winners, 25 lost their second game(62.5%). 15 lost their first game(37.5%).
- IF you lose your first regional game, your chance of winning the regional drops to 7%.
- IF you lose your second regional game, your chance of winning the regional drops to 12%.

Clearly, you don't want to lose either of these games. However, just over 3x a year, a team comes out of the loser's bracket to win a regional. Statistically, 2 of those 3 teams will have lost their 2nd game instead of their first. Hence why the 1st game is the most important overall.