Someone Did The Research And Found The Spalding TF-1000 Ball Is Ruining College Basketball Games

I was at Tennessee-Maryland on Sunday, a college basketball game between two very good teams that was supposed to be a potential Sweet Sixteen preview and ended up being borderline unwatchable. The teams shot a combined 36-118 (30.5 percent) from the field and 9-45 (20 percent) from three, combining for 109 points in the 40 minutes.

Tennessee has the No. 1 defense in the country according to KenPom, but it turns out there may have been something else at play that led to such a poor offensive game: the basketball.

Stats By Will — That’s the Spalding Legacy TF-1000. This is normally not of note in any way, shape, or form, other than the fact it was the basketball used in last year’s Act of God game between Tennessee and Texas Tech. That game produced the single worst combined shooting performance I believe I’ve ever seen in college basketball, or at least between two really good teams that both ended up being 3 seeds.

I don’t have time to go through a decade’s worth of data on which teams use which balls, but helpfully, Spalding themselves tweets every time their ball is used somewhere. Let’s see how teams have shot with that ball in 2022-23, compared to Synergy’s data on the rest of college basketball.

• Games in which I can confirm a TF-1000 was used (13 games, 601 jump shots): 29.8% FG% on all jumpers, 27.5% 3PT%

• All other regular season tournaments: 34.7% FG% on all jumpers, 33.3% 3PT%

• All other regular season play: 34.3% FG% on all jumpers, 33.5% 3PT%

This excludes the horrifying two-game event last year in New York, when Tennessee, Texas Tech, Syracuse, and Villanova - three of which were 3 seeds or higher! - combined to hit 23.9% of their jumpers. There are as many examples of games where teams combined to shoot 20% or worse on jumpers with this ball at a neutral site as there are games where they shot 30% or better.

Will Warren does an outstanding job with stuff like this and found these crazy stats on the Spalding TF-1000, which seems to be empirically the worst basketball on the market. Those numbers aren't negligible.

To the best of my recollection, the two worst basketball games I've ever witnessed — Tennessee-Maryland and Tennessee-Texas Tech — both used this basketball and included both teams shooting horrifically. It seems like this is happening to other teams when they have the misfortune of playing in an event with Spalding balls, as well.

Based on the shots the Vols and Terps took on Sunday, there should have been 36 more points scored in the game.

We use one ball in the NCAA Tournament, so why can't we use one ball across college basketball during the regular season? Just agree that apparel deals don't extend to the actual thing being used to play the game and make the Wilson EVO the ball everybody uses. We have some of those sitting around the office from the Barstool Invitational and they're fantastic.

As long as this Spalding ball is still around, though, consider responsibly betting the under on the Barstool Sportsbook if you find yourself at a neutral site college basketball game and see those bad boys sitting on the rack before warm-ups.