It goes without saying that you shouldn’t be losing games when your effective field goal percentage is north of 70 percent, but then you also shouldn’t be losing games that you lead by 8 at the final media timeout — or by 5 with under a minute to play.
At the latter mark, Vanderbilt had a 95.5% chance of winning per KenPom. In other words, when Scotty Pippen Jr. made a jumper with 44 seconds left to give Vanderbilt a 78-73 lead, that should have been ballgame. Even when Colin Castleton made a pair of free throws with 31 seconds left to cut it to three.