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.
As many have said, this week was all about the Big Ten. The impressive victories that Big Ten teams racked up all but overshadowed the long-awaited return of Ivy League lacrosse. I think part of the reason for that is that the Ivy League performances were only surprising in how similar they felt to what the Ivy League was doing in 2020. The Big Ten, on the other hand, seemed to change the narrative for the entire league with a few big victories.
Fortunately for us, several of the games threw off some interesting statistical nuggets. Let’s dive in.
33 SPOTS
Yes, they scored 20 goals in their win over North Carolina. Yes, Jack Myers has been the highest usage player on the most surprising team of the young season. Yes, Justin Inacio and Drew Blanchard have, so far, been the best faceoff duo in the game. But I want to talk about the Ohio State Buckeyes defense.
Of the three units, the Ohio State defense is the lowest-rated after adjusting for their opponents’ strength. The offense is 13th. The faceoff unit is 1st. The defense is 16th. But if we are interested in why the Buckeyes have seemingly made a leap this year, the defense is the place to look. And that is because, out of the three units, they’ve shown the largest improvement in the early going.
Last year, against the conference-only schedule, Ohio State’s defense ranked 49th nationally. And remember, that is after accounting for the fact that they played only Big Ten offenses. So the jump from 49th to 16th means that they are 33 spots better than they were a season ago.
+0.55 TEAMS
It is never too early for some bracket talk. Are we nearly three months away from Selection Sunday? Sure. Do some teams have only a single game to their name in 2022? Sure. But is it too early to use some projections to assess what this weekend meant to the various leagues around the country? Of course not!
I have a simulation engine that runs through the rest of the season 3,000 times every night. The concept is simple; use the LaxElo ratings to simulate every remaining game up through Selection Sunday, including conference tournaments. And after every simulation run, note whether each team is a tournament lock, a bubble team or on the outside looking in. After 3,000 simulations, you have a pretty good idea of what each team’s chances are.
For our purposes, we can compare the projections from last night to the projections run last Thursday to get a sense of how this weekend’s action changed things. And the Big Ten, to no surprise, is the big winner. Their estimated number of NCAA tournament teams jumped by a full half-team from 1.92 to 2.47 (an increase of 0.55). That jumped them ahead of the Ivy League and the Big East in the pecking order. They are still behind the ACC, though, whose average is currently at 2.71.
1673
Amidst all the pageantry of the Syracuse jersey retirements and the fanfare around the Benson-v-Pietramala defense, there was a more under-the-radar matchup on Sunday in the Carrier Dome. Jakob Phaup won the faceoff battle against Luke Wierman by a 15-13 margin.
The relatively even margin reflects a relatively even matchup. Including this game, Phaup is 14th in raw FO win rate (65 percent) and Wierman is 26th (62 percent). An even matchup between two mid-tier FOGOs. Not so fast. Using the raw win rates obscures the fact that these are two of the best FOGOs in the country.
The problem with faceoff win rates is that they are skewed by who you faced. And Wierman has now faced Phaup, Joey Dahlkemper and Bailey Savio, who are all above average. My preferred method is the Faceoff Elo model, which treats every faceoff as a singular event where the winner of the faceoff takes rating “points” from the loser. By that metric, which accounts for the strength of the opposing FOGO, you get a better sense of what we witnessed Sunday.
As of right now, Phaup is the fifth-highest rated FOGO, and Wierman is sixth with a rating of 1673.
1.27
Penn State is the only Big Ten team to lose this weekend. Maryland seems to be the class of the league so far. A resurgent Johns Hopkins and Ohio State look like they could challenge Rutgers for the second slot. Heck, with the Michigan offense doing what it’s doing, even the Wolverines could be in the mix. And that leaves Penn State.
Not that anyone asked, but if I could wave a magic wand to improve Penn State’s chances the rest of the way, I’d make it so that they weren’t giving opponents so many extra chances to score. So far, only two teams in Division I men’s lacrosse have allowed more than the 1.27 shots-per-possession that Penn State has surrendered.
The Nits have the 60th-rated defense, allowing a 37 percent efficiency rating. But their opponents are shooting 29 percent, which makes the Penn State defense 40th on that metric. The gap is due to the fact that on these extended possessions, the Penn State defense has been quite vulnerable.
When their opponents have gotten one shot in a possession, they Nittany Lions have allowed goals 47 percent of the time. On possessions where opponents get a second shot, that number is 53 percent. For all Division I men’s lacrosse teams, those numbers are 44 percent and 41 percent, respectively.
45.1%
Do you know who currently has the No. 1 opponent-adjusted offense in the country? It’s the team that lost Michael Sowers. No, not Duke. The other team that lost Michael Sowers — Princeton.
After dropping 22 goals on a Monmouth defense that ranked as above-average last year, the Tigers adjusted offensive efficiency is 45.1 percent.
In the face of no new information, the best approach is generally to assume things are the same as they were before. The general consensus heading into this season was that because of the two-year hiatus, the Ivy League teams were going to be worse than they were in 2020. I don’t buy it.
The uncertainty around the Ivy League teams only means that the range of possible outcomes was larger than for other teams, not that those outcomes would necessarily be worse. After a solid first weekend, the Ivy League looked a lot like it did just before its teams got put into cold storage.
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.