Welcome to Beyond the Basics!

My name is Zack Capozzi, and I run LacrosseReference.com, which focuses on developing and sharing new statistics and models for the sport.

The folks at USA Lacrosse Magazine offered me a chance to share some of my observations in a weekly column, and I jumped at the chance. Come back every Tuesday to go beyond the box score in both men’s and women’s lacrosse.

One of the best things about stats is that they can be a good way to surface interesting stories. After all, that is what sports is all about — the stories of players and teams who come together and achieve great things. The reason that stats have a role to play in sports storytelling is that they touch everything. Every team has a range of stats for every game and season. That means that you can slice and dice the data using some simple rules to filter out the interesting nuggets from the noise.

For today’s article, we are going to focus on the Division I women’s lacrosse teams that have made the biggest “leaps” in terms of overall performance in one of the three main areas: offensive efficiency, defensive efficiency and draw control win rate.

You’ll also see references to adjusted metrics and opponent adjustments. The idea here is that we can calculate a raw rate for a given stat, but that doesn’t account for the teams that someone played. An easier slate of opponents may mean that a particular offensive efficiency (goals divided by possessions) isn’t all that impressive.

So, I’ve developed models that calculate an adjustment for every team on every stat that reflects how good they’ve been in that area. Add up the adjustments for all of your opponents and you’ve got your adjusted stats. This gives an apples-to-apples comparison of two teams that accounts for different schedules.

+14

Canisius’ draw control unit finished last season with an adjusted win rate of just 39.7 percent. That put them 96th in the nation for that specific skill. So far this year, in a 2-0 start, the adjusted draw control win rate is 58 percent, which is good for 21st nationally.

Juniors Paige Stachura (nine draw controls) and Kaitlyn Salce (seven draw controls) have led the charge so far. But it’s not just about the win rate; their success in that facet of the game has helped the team to a 14-possession margin in its two wins.

It’s not often that a team will steal a win by having more possessions than its opponent, but it does give you a margin for error that helps paper over the other flaws in a team’s game.

9.5 EXCESS SAVES

No team has undergone a bigger transformation on defense than the East Carolina Pirates. East Carolina ended last season with an adjusted defensive efficiency of 32.7 percent, which placed them 83rd nationally. After three wins to start 2022, the defense is rated as the 19th strongest, with an adjusted efficiency of 19.6 percent.

It’s tough to separate defensive success from goaltending success, but in this case, I think the play of Sophie Bandorick in net is the biggest factor here. I have a model that gives a probability to every shot taken. That also means we can calculate how many saves a keeper “should” have made. Through three games, Bandorick has made 9.5 more saves than you would expect an average keeper to make.

Fortunately, we won’t have to wait long to see if they can keep it up. Two of their next three games are against top-15 offenses. Duke is second, and Jacksonville is 15th.

37%

The Ohio State offense ended 2021 ranked 72nd nationally with an adjusted offensive efficiency of 28.0 percent. Now, you might say, sure, but they played only Big Ten defenses, right? But that’s why we use an adjustment model to account for the strength of the opposing defenses. When we remove the opponent adjustments, their 2021 offense comes in 90th.

Flip over to 2022, and the Buckeyes have scored on 37 percent of their possessions. After applying the opponent adjustments, their offensive unit comes in at No. 8. The thing that stands out so far is their turnover rate which, at just 22 percent, is fourth-best in the country. So far, all three of Lindsay Epstein, Jamie Lasda and Chloe Johnson have a play share over 10 percent and a ball-security rating over 60 (on a 0-99 scale).

27.4%

Here are the offensive ranks for the 2021 Vermont offense:

Shooting percentage: 79th
Turnover rate: 82nd
Shot-on-goal rate: 66th
Shots-per-possession: 76th
Overall offensive efficiency: 88th

The 2022 Catamounts are a totally different animal.

Shooting percentage: 65th
Turnover rate: 20th
Shot-on-goal rate: 91st
Shots-per-possession: 5th
Overall offensive efficiency: 26th

OK, not a totally different animal. Their shooting was actually a bit more impressive last season. It’s the turnover rate, at 27.4 percent in 2022, that really stands out. Is that an echo? No, it’s just that the same thing that is driving the success of the Ohio State resurgence seems to be at play for Vermont as well.

Bottom line, when your ball security is that much better, you get more chances to actually get shots on goal. So despite a shooting percentage that doesn’t rate as highly, the UVM overall offensive efficiency is drastically better.

16.3%

Few teams have had as good a start as Michigan. The Wolverines have paired the ninth-best offensive unit (post opponent adjustments) with the eighth-best defense, powered by the third-best goalkeeping unit. Arielle Weissman alone has 5.5 more saves than you’d expect an average goalkeeper to make.

Even accounting for the all-conference slate last year, their defensive efficiency (goals allowed divided by possessions faced) was 30.7 percent. This year: 16.3 percent.

Now one thing to note. The efficiency and opponent-adjustment models don’t know that Andie Aldave transferred from Notre Dame. The Michigan defense wasn’t nearly as impressive against Cincinnati, so I’ll be watching to see where it settles with a few more games of data to look at. If the Cincinnati game is closer to where its true defense ends up, then this is going to be a much more average unit than the early season stats suggest.

LACROSSE STATS RESOURCES

My goal with this column is to introduce fans to a new way to enjoy lacrosse. “Expand your fandom” is the mantra. I want you to walk away thinking about the players and stories presented here in a new light. But I also understand that some of these concepts can take some time to sink in. And part of the reason for this column is, after all, to educate.

To help this process along, I have several resources that have helped hundreds of lacrosse fans and coaches to internalize these new statistical concepts. The first is a Stats Glossary that explains each of my statistical concepts in more detail than I could fit here. The second is a Stats 101 resource, which provides context for each of my statistics. What is a good number? Who’s the current leader? That’s all there.

And last, I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or comments about the stats, feel free to reach out.