Team Speed Kills: Missouri luckiest SEC team in '14, LSU and Arkansas unluckiest

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Arkansas had some bad luck in 2014. After the Hogs' first loss of the year was a 45-21 defeat to Auburn, they went through the pain of three close losses (plus a fourth larger conference loss loss) before finally breaking their SEC losing streak by beating LSU. Not done, though, they also lost by a touchdown to Missouri to close the season. UK was the only other school more than one down (mostly) after withstanding gut punch losses in triple OT to Florida and by four to Louisville.

Missouri was the only team up two games in the league, so congrats to the Tigers. They were very close to being +3 thanks to beating Tennessee by eight—still a one possession lead. If you want to call that a close win too, then the Vols become a third team at worse than -1.

The deal with Pythagorean expectation is that, given a total of points scored and points allowed, you can project a pretty good estimate for what the winning percentage for a team should be. Multiply that by the number of games played to get a projected win total (Pythagorean wins). The difference between that estimated win count and the actual win count is considered to be luck.

LSU is your chaos team for 2014. The Tigers were tops in good fumble luck, basically neutral in net close wins, and one of the 10 unluckiest teams in the country in Pythagorean expectation. Insert awkward Les Miles clapping gif here.

Arkansas also rates as seriously unlucky here, what with it being last overall. An easy way to come up with an awful luck rating by this formula is to win by a lot when you win (73-7 over Nicholls State, 52-14 over NIU, 45-17 over UAB, 30-0 over Ole Miss) and lose by a little when you lose (see previous section).

Missouri once again comes up charmed, which is OK when you win your division and have a great year. What's not so encouraging is to see Vanderbilt rating as a top 25 team for positive luck when the team only won three games on the season.

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