A shark attack. The return of Elvis. Twerking farm animals. A shirtless guitarist. Kissing unicorns. An old lady yelling at you to get off her lawn. Distracted yet? So, too, are college basketball players, who have tried — and often failed — to overcome the creative attempts of students at Arizona State to destroy the focus of free-throw shooters.

Of course, student sections that try to throw opponents off their game have been around for decades. But Arizona State’s Curtain of Distraction has taken those attempts to a new level. Just as a visiting player is about to shoot a free throw, two students pull apart two big black curtains to reveal a new five-second act in a continuing theater of the absurd.

The most striking aspect of the routine, though, isn’t any of the bizarre characters. It’s the result. A statistical analysis by The Upshot — with an assist from Nick Wan, who runs the True Brain blog, and from Jan Zilinsky — suggests that the Curtain really works.

It appears to give Arizona State an additional one- to two-point advantage per home game, beyond the normal homecourt advantage. The Curtain may even have played the pivotal role in the Sun Devils’ recent upset of their state rivals, the Arizona Wildcats.