Effects of consecutive basketball games on the game-related statistics that discriminate winner and losing teams

The aim of the present study was to identify the game-relatedstatistics that discriminated basketball winning and losing teamsin each of the three consecutive games played in a condensedtournament format. the data were obtained from the spanishbasketball federation and included game-related statistics fromthe under-20 league (2005-2006 and 2006-2007 seasons). atotal of 223 games were analyzed with the following gamerelatedstatistics: two and three-point field goal (made andmissed), free-throws (made and missed), offensive and defensiverebounds, assists, steals, turnovers, blocks (made and received),fouls committed, ball possessions and offensive rating.results showed that winning teams in this competition hadbetter values in all game-related statistics, with the exception ofthree point field goals made, free-throws missed and turnovers(p . 0.05). the main effect of game number was only identifiedin turnovers, with a statistical significant decrease between thesecond and third game. no interaction was found in the analysedvariables. a discriminant analysis allowed identifying the twopointfield goals made, the defensive rebounds and the assists asdiscriminators between winning and losing teams in all threegames. additionally to these, only the three-point field goalsmade contributed to discriminate teams in game three, suggestinga moderate effect of fatigue. coaches may benefit frombeing aware of this variation in game determinant related statisticsand, also, from using offensive and defensive strategies inthe third game, allowing to explore or hide the three point fieldgoalsperformance.