Comeback From 4-0 Down

[Manuela]

Theless likely the comeback the more memorable it is. Yes we can stop watching when our team is hopelessly behind, but then Daniel Camarena and Kyle Tucker hit Grand Slams or Rajai Davis and Kirk Gibson hit 2 run homers and things are upside down.

Texas A&M, with a roster featuring seven former top-100 high school prospects and four future NBA players, most notably future NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers Alex Caruso, share the SEC's regular-season title with Kentucky in 2016. The two conference foes played twice that season. Texas A&M won the schools' only regular-season meeting in overtime, then the 'Cats defeated the Aggies in the SEC tournament championship game in OT, which gave Texas A&M a 26-8 record and a No. 17 AP poll ranking on Selection Sunday.

Still leading by 10 points after Gilder's basket, Northern Iowa was attempting to inbound the ball from the sideline, with one baseline and the Panthers' own basket to their left, and the Aggies' bench behind them.

Northern Iowa's Wyatt Lohaus, 6-2, was the player tasked with inbounding the ball, with a player guarding him who had an eight-inch height advantage. Morgan made a break towards midcourt and he was open, with his defender, Caruso, looking in the opposite direction.

With Caruso, now turned and ready to defend Morgan, closing in on Morgan, Lohaus threw the pass high and Morgan went for the one-handed reception, but he was unable to corral the second-most prized possession at that point in the game. The most-prized possession? Well, that was the clock.

Gilder managed to recover the former and essentially retain the latter, as he scooped up the ball, took one dribble, lofted a pass to teammate Danuel House, who shimmied his way to the hoop, using one dribble, before floating a shot just over the rim. His defender, Jesperson, simply tried to avoid fouling House, given that Texas A&M was in the double bonus.

From the inbound pass to the basket, just 5.3 seconds came off the clock, which was ahead of schedule of the one-point-per-3.7-seconds pace that Texas A&M started with, when it trailed by 12 with 44.3 seconds to go.

Speaking of efficiency, the basket that arguably turned Texas A&M's comeback hopes from a fever dream for Northern Iowa to a burgeoning reality was the Aggies' third made basket during their improbable run.

Coming out of the timeout, with Northern Iowa leading by eight and inbounding the ball from under its own basket, Lohaus found a safety valve in Jesperson, although the 6-6 senior was near the corner and he was quickly double-teamed by two players taller than him, the 6-10 Trocha-Morelos and 6-7 Jalen Jones.

Oddly, Northern Iowa point guard Wes Washpun was near the play but he moved further from the ball and Jesperson, perhaps quick to sense a potentially looming five-second call, jumped and tried to throw the ball off of Trocha-Morelos and out of bounds. But he committed the worst kind of self-inflicted wound in this scenario: a live-ball turnover under his team's own basket.

Jones was able to catch the ball, gather without dribbling, and slam home an uncontested dunk, cutting Texas A&M's deficit to six. From start to finish, the play took 3.8 seconds, or 1.9 seconds per point.

After Jones' dunk, Lohaus was unable in inbound the ball, committing a turnover and giving the ball back to Texas A&M, under Northern Iowa's basket. For the third offensive possession in a row, the Aggies would start their offensive possession on that end of the floor, each of which added up to significant savings in terms of the time left on the clock.

Caruso was the one to inbound the ball. Texas A&M's four other players on the floor assembled themselves in what was nearly an isosceles trapezoid, a symmetrical formation where Jones and Gilder each occupied one corner, and Trocha-Morelos and House stood at the elbows. Trocha-Morelos set a down screen for House, who ran to the left wing, where Northern Iowa's Klint Carlson had switched onto him.

But Carlson, who looked right at Caruso, then left at House, then repeated this checks-and-balances process twice more, briefly lost the Aggies' guard, who would later shoot 37-percent from the NBA 3-point line during four seasons with the Houston Rockets. Without dribbling, House caught the ball and fired. The ball was out of his hands before both of Carlson's feet had left the ground to contest the shot.

Then, for the first time in 197 seconds of game action, Northern Iowa made a basket. Ten consecutive Panthers points had come from the free throw line, but the next two, which were much, much-needed for this eager, eleventh-seeded team, came in the form of a dunk.

With Jesperson now inbounding the ball for the Panthers after their previous troubles, Carlson leaked across midcourt undetected and Jesperson hit him with a one-handed, overhanded pass, which Carlson caught, then dribbled once and dunked, putting Northern Iowa up by five.

In reality, he should've been called for a five-second call, which actually would've been a better alternative for the Panthers. He caught the inbounds pass with 11.8 seconds remaining and held onto it until there were 5.6 seconds left on the clock.

But the call, which at least would've allowed Northern Iowa to set its defense, wasn't made and Gilder picked it up after one bounce. He dribbled once, with Jesperson as the Panthers' last line of defense. Jesperson, now protecting just a two-point lead and having just given up a three-point play on a similar play, actually moved out of the way to ensure that he didn't foul Gilder, potentially setting up an Aggies win in regulation.

This time Jesperson was the inbounder. Washpun was the recipient. He turned and fired a shot from some 70 feet away from what would've been the world's greatest magic eraser. He hit the backboard, but his shot was too high, and the game, which was on pace for a double-digit defeat only breaths earlier, went to overtime.

Northern Iowa, which closed regulation on a remarkable 14-2 run, also scored the first three points of overtime on an old-fashioned three-point play from House. Neither team led by more than three points in the first overtime, with Texas A&M needing a two-handed runner in the lane from Caruso with 5.9 seconds left.

"Jesperson, are you kidding me!?" said Blackburn. But Jesperson's shot was off the mark and there was actually enough time for Caruso to attempt a last-second heave of his own, which appeared to have the right trajectory, but it was short on length.

Texas A&M outscored Northern Iowa 9-5 in the second overtime, when perhaps the law of averages caught up to the once-powering Panthers. Give a more talented team, as defined by things like NBA careers and recruiting evaluations, more time, and odds are they'll be more likely to win.

No one scored for the first minute and 28 seconds of overtime, until Northern Iowa's Morgan made a free throw. Texas A&M then rattled off five points in a row. With about seven seconds left and Texas A&M up four, Morgan's 3-point attempt was off the mark, and the collapse was complete.

If any given player on tour drops the opening two sets to their opponent at a major tournament, how likely are they to make the comeback? At which of the Slams does the comeback occur the most? Going one step further than this, the crown jewel of being 0-2 down - how often has a player gone 0-2 down at a Grand Slam, completed the comeback and then gone on to win the tournament?

Take any given player at any of the Grand Slams. They drop the first two sets to their opponent - without knowing anything else about them, what is the approximate chance of them completing the comeback?

This could be a result of the Australian Open being so early in the tennis calendar. Players can put everything into their comeback using energy that would otherwise be expended nearer the end of the year.

There have been 23 occasions where a player has dropped their opening two sets in a match, won that match, and then gone on to win the tournament or won the tournament as a result of the win i.e. a win in the final. Since there have been 15848 occasions where a player has won the opening two sets in the Open Era, this could be framed as a 23/15848 chance of making the comeback of comebacks, approximately 1 in every 689 matches from 0-2 down.

A more telling statistic would be to take the number of times a Slam champion has had to recover from 0-2 down during their title run and frame it within the context of the total amount of Grand Slams won in the Open Era.

Expanding on the rankings of players that have pulled off this feat, Michael Chang is the only player ranked outside the top 10 to have successfully won a Slam after going 0-2 down during the tournament. He was ranked number 19 and beat Ivan Lendl on his way to the French Open in 1989. Here is his victory among the full list of these elite players.

This list includes two appearances from six players; Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. Therefore, only 17 different players have achieved this feat, reinforcing just how difficult it is to achieve this.

Six players have twice won a Grand Slam after going 0-2 down at one point in the tournament, including Novak Djokovic. Though he has only comeback from 0-2 down four times in his career, two of those victories have led him to a Grand Slam victory.

In the first part of the \u201C0-2 down\u201D series, we determined the GOATs of the 0-2 comeback - who had the highest winning percentage from 0-2 down in the Open Era and which of the active players on tour was best from 0-2 down. Have a read here if you missed it.

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