Lacrosse Analytics

[laxreference]

Updated list of Live Win Probability Links

- Duke vs Jacksonville
- Johns Hopkins vs Mount St Marys
- Ohio State vs Notre Dame
- Siena vs Fairfield
- St. John's vs Hofstra
- UMass vs LIU
- North Carolina vs Bryant

[laxreference]

Updated list of Live Win Probability Links

- Furman vs Penn State
- Duke vs Jacksonville
- Johns Hopkins vs Mount St Marys
- Ohio State vs Notre Dame
- Siena vs Fairfield
- St. John's vs Hofstra
- UMass vs LIU
- North Carolina vs Bryant

[laxreference]

As always, here is the daily digest for Mar 10, 2020.

[laxreference]

Well, while there are games going, the live win probability engine will be running...

Michigan vs Marquette

[laxreference]

I'm doing a survey to try and capture the lacrosse community's expectations for how the COVID-19 pandemic is going to affect the 2021 season.

The survey is a Google Form, which you can access here.

If you do not have a Google account and would like to have your opinion captured, send me a message and I'll send you the questions.

[laxreference]

I'm doing a survey to try and capture the lacrosse community's expectations for how the COVID-19 pandemic is going to affect the 2021 season.

The survey is a Google Form, which you can access here.

If you do not have a Google account and would like to have your opinion captured, send me a message and I'll send you the questions.

45 responses so far. Keep 'em coming!

[laxreference]

Got a new model/metric to share: the faceoff Elo ratings.

If you've followed the site in the past, you'll recognize the Elo concept from our team rankings. Well, I've implemented the same algorithm for FOGOs. Each faceoff is a discrete event, so it's amenable to the Elo mechanisms. Admittedly, wing play affects a FOGOs probability of winning any given faceoff, but I think this is still superior to comparing FOGOs based on win percentage alone.

I'm not quite sure yet how these ratings will flow into all my other content, but for now, it's just fun to have the list.

Player (Team) - career fElo
-----------------------------------
1) TD Ierlan (Yale) - 1802
2) Trevor Baptiste (Denver) - 1801
3) Alex Woodall (Towson) - 1767
4) Jon Garino (Maryland) - 1762
5) Zach Cole (Saint Joseph's) - 1728
6) Kevin Massa (Bryant) - 1710
7) Trent Harper (Air Force) - 1709
8) Kyle Gallagher (Penn) - 1704
9) Conor Mackie (Yale) - 1703
10) Will Gural (Brown) - 1701

[oldbartman]

Got a new model/metric to share: the faceoff Elo ratings.

If you've followed the site in the past, you'll recognize the Elo concept from our team rankings. Well, I've implemented the same algorithm for FOGOs. Each faceoff is a discrete event, so it's amenable to the Elo mechanisms. Admittedly, wing play affects a FOGOs probability of winning any given faceoff, but I think this is still superior to comparing FOGOs based on win percentage alone.

I'm not quite sure yet how these ratings will flow into all my other content, but for now, it's just fun to have the list.

Player (Team) - career fElo
-----------------------------------
1) TD Ierlan (Yale) - 1802
2) Trevor Baptiste (Denver) - 1801
3) Alex Woodall (Towson) - 1767
4) Jon Garino (Maryland) - 1762
5) Zach Cole (Saint Joseph's) - 1728
6) Kevin Massa (Bryant) - 1710
7) Trent Harper (Air Force) - 1709
8) Kyle Gallagher (Penn) - 1704
9) Conor Mackie (Yale) - 1703
10) Will Gural (Brown) - 1701

Very cool! Would love to see the top 50 or so for the past few years.

[laxreference]

Top 100 (covers all faceoffs taken since 2015); sorry for the ugly formatting

fElo Rank - Player - Team - fElo Rating
---------------------------------------------------------------
1 TD Ierlan Yale 1802
2 Trevor BAPTISTE Denver 1801
3 Alex Woodall Towson 1767
4 Jon Garino Maryland 1762
5 Zach COLE Saint Joseph's 1728
6 Kevin MASSA Bryant 1710
7 Trent Harper Air Force 1709
8 Kyle Gallagher Penn 1704
9 Conor Mackie Yale 1703
10 Will Gural Brown 1701
11 Justin Shockey Maryland 1700
12 Kyle Prouty Johns Hopkins 1688
13 Brady Dove Navy 1686
14 Alec STATHAKIS Denver 1685
15 Jake Withers Ohio State 1683
16 Kenny MASSA Bryant 1682
17 Hunter Forbes Jacksonville 1681
18 Kyle Rowe Duke 1676
19 Conor Gaffney Lehigh 1671
20 Danny TESLER Cleveland State 1670
21 Brian Herber Hofstra 1669
22 Justin Inacio Ohio State 1664
23 Dan Grabher Army 1663
24 Frankie Labetti Fairfield 1661
25 Peter Moran Richmond 1661
26 Dan OConnell Holy Cross 1659
27 Malcolm Feeney Colgate 1658
28 Peter TAGLIAFERRI Georgetown 1656
29 Graham Savio Loyola 1654
30 Joe Nardella Rutgers 1652
31 Phil Hession Dartmouth 1650
32 Bailey Savio Loyola 1649
33 Matt Gunty Brown 1649
34 Angelo Petrakis Cornell 1648
35 Zachary MELILLO Marquette 1647
36 Joe Varello Navy 1644
37 Matt Nareweski Johns Hopkins 1643
38 Petey LaSalla Virginia 1643
39 Sam Talkow Boston U 1641
40 John Travisano Notre Dame 1637
41 Tom Meyers UMass 1636
42 Colin KEATING Providence 1635
43 Peyton Smith Marist 1634
44 Ashton Wood Mercer 1633
45 Jakob Phaup Syracuse 1631
46 Danny Varello Syracuse 1629
47 James REILLY Georgetown 1629
48 Charlie Raffa Maryland 1627
49 Gerard Arceri Penn State 1627
50 Justin Schwenk Virginia 1625
51 Stephen Kelly North Carolina 1622
52 Dylan Protesto Hartford 1621
53 John Neuman Yale 1621
54 Jordan Ginder Duke 1620
55 Jake FROCCARO Villanova 1620
56 Noah Rak UMass 1620
57 Connor Cronin Michigan 1620
58 Mike Sisselberger Lehigh 1620
59 Domenic Massimilian Cornell 1619
60 Will Beecham Mercer 1618
61 Brett BOOS Denver 1617
62 Andrew Hamilton Richmond 1615
63 Richie Lenskold Penn 1614
64 Justin COPPOLA Villanova 1610
65 Ryan OConnell North Carolina 1610
66 Charles Leonard Notre Dame 1608
67 Davis Sampere High Point 1608
68 Nick Ossello Notre Dame 1608
69 Brad Lott Michigan 1607
70 Zac Tucci North Carolina 1607
71 Nick Rowlett Michigan 1606
72 Matthew Pedicine Hobart 1605
73 Zachary Tucci North Carolina 1605
74 Kevin Snyder Boston U 1605
75 Christopher May Ohio State 1604
76 Jason Simaan Brown 1599
77 Mike McDonnell Michigan 1599
78 Will Vitelli Quinnipiac 1599
79 Trey ARNOLD Robert Morris 1599
80 Steven Stillwell Towson 1598
81 Jake Glatz Penn State 1598
82 Elliott Burr Boston U 1595
83 Allyn FRENCH Merrimack 1594
84 Drew Blanchard Hobart 1594
85 Josh Wellman Penn State 1594
86 Dan FISHER Villanova 1593
87 Ben Williams Ohio State 1593
88 Demitri George Quinnipiac 1593
89 Sean Christman Boston U 1593
90 Alex Poma UMBC 1592
91 Alex Jarzembowski Detroit 1592
92 Jason Murphy Virginia 1591
93 Zach Currier Princeton 1591
94 Carson MILBURN Georgetown 1590
95 Seth DeLisle Syracuse 1588
96 Luke PALMADESSO Villanova 1586
97 Nick HALEY Mount St Marys 1586
98 Nicholas Vazquez Hartford 1586
99 Jacob Griffin Richmond 1585
100 Daniel Mazurek Binghamton 1583

[oldbartman]

Thank you!

[Dip&Dunk]

So is this a function of ability or opportunities and ability? Sure seems like the later as a low scoring team (or even two low scoring teams playing each other) is not going to provide the same number of opportunities. I will stay with FO win percentage.

[Farfromgeneva]

Wonder where Alex Smith would stack up on this list or Greg Guerenlian (so?)

[laxreference]

Wonder where Alex Smith would stack up on this list or Greg Guerenlian (so?)

Yeah, this is a great question. I hate that I always have to say "Best Ever! (Since 2015)"

I know that trying to collect play-by-play logs from games before 2015 would be the type of undertaking that would make me hate this LacrosseReference project, but it's questions like this that tempt me to try.

[Farfromgeneva]

Oh appreciate the work even though I’d prefer a model where Matthew Pedicine was higher. Just curious and stating publicly

[laxreference]

So is this a function of ability or opportunities and ability? Sure seems like the later as a low scoring team (or even two low scoring teams playing each other) is not going to provide the same number of opportunities. I will stay with FO win percentage.

It's a great question. And to an extent you are right. The best FOGO in the world, destined to never lose a faceoff, can only climb so high after 5, 10, 25 faceoffs. But Elo models are designed to stabilize eventually, and I suspect it's sooner than you'd expect. Garino is a great example; he's #4 on the list even though he only had 263 career faceoff attempts.

So regardless of pace and/or whether a team is low-scoring or not, the impact of not having many opportunities gets washed out pretty quickly. A single season as a primary FOGO is plenty of time for the Elo rating to reflect skill and not be skewed by a lack of chances.

[laxreference]

Welcome back Lacrosse! Am I right?

Anyway, I've got the game links for the 2 games. As always, these will be preview links until the game starts, then they'll switch over to the real thing (with some updates since last season).

- Utah vs Bellarmine

- Towson vs Virginia

I've got some additional thoughts on the UVA/Towson game, related to the evolution of Towson's scheduling. 2020 was also an interesting coda to a trend related to the scheduling strategy that Coach Nadelen has put together. In short, the Tigers' schedules have become much more difficult.

We can measure this by using our opponent-adjustment factors. In 2017, their avg opponent had a defense that was 0.4 percentage points better than the league-average D. Then...

'18: +0.7%
'19: +2.4%
'20: +2.5%

Only Penn, Lafayette, and Villanova faced a tougher of defenses last year.

And the trend is very similar on the offensive side. I think the '20 Towson season looks bad, in part, because they didn't get to reap the fruits of their early season trials. Hard to imagine that the early struggles wouldn't have helped them during the CAA season and tournament. Either way, I'm sure no team is looking forward to putting 2020 behind them more than Towson.

[laxreference]

Here we go with the Week 0+ Individual Player Performances

The full post is here.

Leading the way was Petey LaSalla of UVA with an all-around performance against Towson (7.35 EGA). The Towson Tigers drop-off at FOGO since Alex Woodall left Baltimore is arguably the biggest factor in their decline. But you still need someone on the other end to take advantage. And with this performance, LaSalla moves up to #8 in my new faceoff Elo ratings (which goes back to 2015).

Here are the rest of the top-10:

Chris Gray (UNC) - 6.41 EGA
Ashton Wood (MER) - 6.29 EGA
Alec STATHAKIS (DEN) - 5.82 EGA
Connor Shellenberger (UVA) - 5.70 EGA
Cole Brams (UTAH) - 5.60 EGA
Charlie BERTRAND (UVA) - 5.38 EGA
Jake Naso (DUKE) - 5.21 EGA
Jack HANNAH (DEN) - 5.14 EGA
Payton Cormier (UVA) - 4.84 EGA

And here is the top-10 graphic ( I will normally do 20 players, but we have been pretty light on games so far. )

PlayerGame_visualization_d1m_20210208.png (30.96 KiB) Viewed 2334 times

[laxreference]

The link in the post above was broken. It has been fixed.

[laxreference]

8 MLAX games on the schedule today. Here are the live win probability game pages:

- Sacred Heart vs Stony Brook
- St. John's vs Hofstra
- Providence vs Bryant
- High Point vs Robert Morris
- Saint Joseph's vs Towson
- Air Force vs Denver
- Jacksonville vs North Carolina
- Mercer vs Duke

[laxreference]

As always, here is the top individual EGA performances of the past week. The full post is here, but here are the highlights...

Ryan Tierney (Hofstra) took the top spot with an 8.68 EGA performance in the OT loss to St. John's. Tierney's 11 point effort represented career highs in goals, points, EGA, and...turnovers.

The rest of the top 10 was:
Chris Gray (UNC) - 7.71 EGA
Nathan Kapp (JAV) - 6.91 EGA
Alec STATHAKIS (DEN) - 5.13 EGA
Dylan Willis (STJ) - 5.10 EGA
Zach COLE (SJOE) - 4.99 EGA
Joe Madsen (STJ) - 4.96 EGA
Dylan Pallonetti (STNY) - 4.88 EGA
Mike Madsen (STJ) - 4.51 EGA
Ashton Wood (MER) - 4.50 EGA

Here is the infographic in case you want the visual view:

PlayerGame_visualization_d1m_20210215.png (33.55 KiB) Viewed 2181 times