LaxPower Back-Up Stick

5 games on the docket today. Follow up on all of them here:

- UMBC vs Mount St Marys
- LIU vs Hofstra
- Hobart vs Colgate
- Quinnipiac vs Sacred Heart
- Stony Brook vs St. John's

Here's a quick rundown of today's games

Duke vs Penn

The Duke defense is currently ranked 22nd nationally on an opponent-adjusted basis. But it's a tough ranking to parse because when you look at non-garbage time, they are 43rd. So the defense has been great in games that were out of hand and less great in the tight games.

<div class='lr-embed-div' ... Read More

Virginia vs Syracuse

So far, Syracuse is making 2021 look at lot like a blip rather than a trend. As good as the offense as last year, they've been better so far in 2022. The defense went from a 32.6% opp-adjusted defensive efficiency last year to 25.6% this year (18th in the country). ... Read More

Drexel vs Albany

When we last saw Drexel in 2021, they were giving a serious scare to Notre Dame in the NCAA 1st round. They've since started the 2022 season with losses to UMBC (slight upset) and Lafayette (huge upset). So what happened to Drexel over the off-season?

On an ... Read More

And here are the preview pages for the rest of the games...
Yale vs Penn State
High Point vs Navy
Monmouth vs Delaware
Dartmouth vs Bryant
Canisius vs Air Force
Rutgers vs Loyola
Vermont vs Brown
Saint Joseph's vs Providence
Richmond vs Towson
Bucknell vs Marist
NJIT vs Army
Hampton vs Bellarmine
St. Bonaventure vs VMI
Wagner vs Manhattan
Cornell vs Lehigh
UMass vs Boston U
Fairfield vs Villanova
Princeton vs Maryland
Georgetown vs Notre Dame
Cleveland State vs Michigan
Jacksonville vs Denver
Utah vs Marquette
Binghamton vs Lafayette
Ohio State vs Harvard

Here's a quick rundown of some of the finals

Duke vs Penn

I know of no better way to score goals than to get shots on net. If you don't have shots getting to the keeper, you won't have shots getting past the keeper. For teams that want to score more goals, they should simply shoot more shots. I'm being facetious of ... Read More

Penn State vs Yale

Prior to today, Penn State had allowed 65 goals across 4 games. 31 of those came on the 2nd or later shot of a possession. In their 3 losses, they were allowing 1.38 shots/possession. Since those 2nd chances were turning into goals at such a high rate, it made ... Read More

Delaware vs Monmouth

One of the more surprising early season trends has been the Delaware offense out-performing their marks from last season without the services of Charlie Kitchen. I see 2 things that have happened. The first is that Mike Robinson has showed that he is much more than a ... Read More

Brown vs Vermont

Brown? Speed? You betcha. The Bears average first shot in this game came after just 18.5 seconds of possession. That's fast.

Also of note: the play of Matt Gunty winning 13 faceoffs against Tommy Burke. Gunty had a less-than-stellar game against UNC, but bounced back in a ... Read More

And the links for the rest of the day's games...
High Point vs Navy
Dartmouth vs Bryant
Rutgers vs Loyola
Syracuse vs Virginia
Albany vs Drexel
Saint Joseph's vs Providence
Richmond vs Towson
Bucknell vs Marist
NJIT vs Army
Hampton vs Bellarmine
St. Bonaventure vs VMI
Wagner vs Manhattan
Cornell vs Lehigh
UMass vs Boston U
Fairfield vs Villanova
Princeton vs Maryland
Georgetown vs Notre Dame
Cleveland State vs Michigan
Jacksonville vs Denver
Utah vs Marquette
Binghamton vs Lafayette
Ohio State vs Harvard

Updated list of Live Win Probability Links

- Jacksonville vs Air Force
- LIU vs Stony Brook
- Canisius vs Denver
- Merrimack vs Holy Cross
- Siena vs UMass-Lowell
- Johns Hopkins vs North Carolina
- St. John's vs Hofstra

I don't know that this is the proper place to pose what may seem like a dumb question so my apologies in advance if it ain't so:


For years whenever a team goes on attack and the defense is adjusting, the TV/online announcer would say it has come into an "unsettled situation". For the past couple of years or so, it appears that this term is no longer being used. Can anyone explain why?

I'm doing a ranking for the first time this year with the College Crosse guys. The model takes into account the Elo ratings for each team and their SOR ratings as well. Here's what I've got after this weekend's games.

laxreference wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:05 am I'm doing a ranking for the first time this year with the College Crosse guys. The model takes into account the Elo ratings for each team and their SOR ratings as well. Here's what I've got after this weekend's games.

lacrossereference_rankings_20220228_NCAAD1Men.jpg

That's the best rankings I seen so far.

laxreference wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:05 am I'm doing a ranking for the first time this year with the College Crosse guys. The model takes into account the Elo ratings for each team and their SOR ratings as well. Here's what I've got after this weekend's games.

lacrossereference_rankings_20220228_NCAAD1Men.jpg

Will be interesting to see if there’s 4 ivies in the top 13 in a few weeks.

laxreference wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 5:37 pm Here's a quick rundown of some of the finals

Duke vs Penn

I know of no better way to score goals than to get shots on net. If you don't have shots getting to the keeper, you won't have shots getting past the keeper. For teams that want to score more goals, they should simply shoot more shots. I'm being facetious of ... Read More

Penn State vs Yale

Prior to today, Penn State had allowed 65 goals across 4 games. 31 of those came on the 2nd or later shot of a possession. In their 3 losses, they were allowing 1.38 shots/possession. Since those 2nd chances were turning into goals at such a high rate, it made ... Read More

Delaware vs Monmouth

One of the more surprising early season trends has been the Delaware offense out-performing their marks from last season without the services of Charlie Kitchen. I see 2 things that have happened. The first is that Mike Robinson has showed that he is much more than a ... Read More

Brown vs Vermont

Brown? Speed? You betcha. The Bears average first shot in this game came after just 18.5 seconds of possession. That's fast.

Also of note: the play of Matt Gunty winning 13 faceoffs against Tommy Burke. Gunty had a less-than-stellar game against UNC, but bounced back in a ... Read More

And the links for the rest of the day's games...
High Point vs Navy
Dartmouth vs Bryant
Rutgers vs Loyola
Syracuse vs Virginia
Albany vs Drexel
Saint Joseph's vs Providence
Richmond vs Towson
Bucknell vs Marist
NJIT vs Army
Hampton vs Bellarmine
St. Bonaventure vs VMI
Wagner vs Manhattan
Cornell vs Lehigh
UMass vs Boston U
Fairfield vs Villanova
Princeton vs Maryland
Georgetown vs Notre Dame
Cleveland State vs Michigan
Jacksonville vs Denver
Utah vs Marquette
Binghamton vs Lafayette
Ohio State vs Harvard

Serious question, how do you have the time, resources, and even access to watch and do the analytics for all of these games. Stuff like this exists for football like PFF, but they literally employ tons of people. The level of support needed for 30+ games per week must be tremendous.

InsiderRoll wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:35 am

laxreference wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 5:37 pm Here's a quick rundown of some of the finals

Duke vs Penn

I know of no better way to score goals than to get shots on net. If you don't have shots getting to the keeper, you won't have shots getting past the keeper. For teams that want to score more goals, they should simply shoot more shots. I'm being facetious of ... Read More

Serious question, how do you have the time, resources, and even access to watch and do the analytics for all of these games. Stuff like this exists for football like PFF, but they literally employ tons of people. The level of support needed for 30+ games per week must be tremendous.

You just made my day. Thank you.

Time?

I quit my job last February to start LacrosseReference, LLC, so in terms of work-time, I'm 100% focused on this. As for a team? Zero, it's just me and my robots. Here's the full story if you are interested.

Resources?

The LacrosseReference project is 6 years old at this point (crazy to say that out loud), and I've put thousands of hours into building systems that collect and process the raw data for me so that there isn't a ton of manual work that needs to be done to prepare the underlying statistics. I've also worked on building tools so that I can analyze a game or player and come up with something valuable to add to the discussion without having to do a ton of manual research time.

I did use the money from early PRO site subscriptions to buy a 2nd used laptop to help me do the live stats win probability processing. When it was just one laptop, that thing was getting white hot. I don't love the multiple monitors on our kitchen counter every weekend, but so far, the dam is holding.

Access?

People might hate this or at least be surprised, but I am able to watch very little actual lacrosse (I have three kids under 6 after all). If it wasn't automated, LacrosseReference wouldn't exist. One day, I hope to be able to sit back and actually watch a full Saturday slate; but not yet. But for now, pretty much everything I do is based on the robots pulling play-by-play and turning it into stats/tables/graphs that I work off of.

Thanks again. Glad to know I'm the PFF of lacrosse with 1/1000 of their resources!

lorin wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:08 am

laxreference wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:05 am I'm doing a ranking for the first time this year with the College Crosse guys. The model takes into account the Elo ratings for each team and their SOR ratings as well. Here's what I've got after this weekend's games.

That's the best rankings I seen so far.

If you were being facetious, then ignore, but if not, which teams do you think I've got more accurately ranked than most?

Farfromgeneva wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:27 am

laxreference wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:05 am I'm doing a ranking for the first time this year with the College Crosse guys. The model takes into account the Elo ratings for each team and their SOR ratings as well. Here's what I've got after this weekend's games.

Will be interesting to see if there’s 4 ivies in the top 13 in a few weeks.

100%. We'll get a good sense of if the league is really "back" after the Cornell/OSU game and next weekend in general. Love this time of year though, feels like we are going to get a lot of "something's gotta give" games between top teams.

laxreference wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 11:15 am

lorin wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:08 am

laxreference wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:05 am I'm doing a ranking for the first time this year with the College Crosse guys. The model takes into account the Elo ratings for each team and their SOR ratings as well. Here's what I've got after this weekend's games.

That's the best rankings I seen so far.

If you were being facetious, then ignore, but if not, which teams do you think I've got more accurately ranked than most?

11 thru 20, just not selled on Delaware yet.

laxreference wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 11:15 am

lorin wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:08 am

laxreference wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:05 am I'm doing a ranking for the first time this year with the College Crosse guys. The model takes into account the Elo ratings for each team and their SOR ratings as well. Here's what I've got after this weekend's games.

That's the best rankings I seen so far.

If you were being facetious, then ignore, but if not, which teams do you think I've got more accurately ranked than most?

Not the original poster, but I really ike this list too. What stood out to me: No Syracuse in top 20. Jacksonville in top 10. Delaware at 12. Notre Dame at 15. Villanova, Richmond, St Joes, Boston U in top 20.

Appears to be a good mix of real world results and reasonable assumptions.

rolldodge wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 11:21 am

laxreference wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 11:15 am

lorin wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:08 am

laxreference wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:05 am I'm doing a ranking for the first time this year with the College Crosse guys. The model takes into account the Elo ratings for each team and their SOR ratings as well. Here's what I've got after this weekend's games.

That's the best rankings I seen so far.

If you were being facetious, then ignore, but if not, which teams do you think I've got more accurately ranked than most?

Not the original poster, but I really ike this list too. What stood out to me: No Syracuse in top 20. Jacksonville in top 10. Delaware at 12. Notre Dame at 15. Villanova, Richmond, St Joes, Boston U in top 20.

Appears to be a good mix of real world results and reasonable assumptions.

My philosophy is a) don't over-react to much to the most recent results (Elo is about half the model at this point, and it's a relatively slow moving algorithm) and b) use the full season's results (Strength-of-Record is the other half) so that we aren't glossing over stuff that didn't happen last weekend too much.

Since this is the first time I've done a weekly ranking, I'm still working on the balance between the two. For example, I tweaked the SOR weight up a bit when the first run had Loyola ranked this week.

Here's a quick rundown of today's games

Cornell vs Ohio State

Cornell is going to take a step back. They are losing a generational talent in Jeff Teat. They haven't played in 2 years. We are all familiar with the reasons that the Ivies would be struggling in 2022. At least for Cornell, the reason those arguments failed to materialize is ... Read More

Georgetown vs Princeton

A classic immovable object vs unstoppable force matchup here. Georgetown is the #1 opponent-adjusted defense. Princeton is the #2 opponent-adjusted offense. Ok, that's not quite fair. Georgetown is currently the 6th rated offense, the 4th rated faceoff team and McElroy in net has ranked 2nd in the early going.

So ... Read More

Notre Dame vs Maryland

This feels like a do-or-die game for Notre Dame. The Irish hung tough with Georgetown and wiped the field with Detroit. The offense has been good so far, but the defense and faceoff units struggled against the Hoyas. Despite the spurt in the 3rd quarter, Notre Dame barely sniffed ... Read More

And here are the preview pages for the rest of the games...
Dartmouth vs Siena
Bryant vs Vermont
Hampton vs St. Bonaventure
Richmond vs Duke
Delaware vs Michigan
Boston U vs Colgate
Marist vs Air Force
Bellarmine vs High Point
Denver vs North Carolina
Rutgers vs Stony Brook
UMBC vs Towson
Drexel vs LIU
Robert Morris vs Mercer
Loyola vs Lafayette
Detroit vs Marquette
NJIT vs Wagner
Manhattan vs St. John's
UMass vs Yale
Hofstra vs Villanova
Johns Hopkins vs Virginia
Brown vs Providence
Monmouth vs Saint Joseph's
Binghamton vs Bucknell
Harvard vs Fairfield
Navy vs Lehigh
Penn State vs Penn
UMass-Lowell vs Merrimack

Here's a quick rundown of some of the finals

Cornell vs Ohio State

It seems weird to say, but Ohio State was relatively successful taking care of the ball against Cornell today. Coming in, the Big Red had forced turnovers on 47% of their opponents' offensive possessions. Today, OSU turned it over on 40%.

Understandably, that isn't going to come as much consolation ... Read More

Michigan vs Delaware

Michigan and Delaware entered the game with fairly similar offensive profiles. Michigan was 14th in adjusted offensive efficiency. Delaware was 16th.

Delaware had the 11th best shooting percentage; the Wolverines were 13st. On turnovers, they were 11th and 14th.

The biggest difference was pacing; Michigan preferred to go faster, with their ... Read More

Georgetown vs Princeton

In my preview, I noted that a thing to watch in this game is what happens in the last 20 seconds of the shot clock when Princeton has the ball.

Coming in, they were shooting a whopping 54% in the last 20 seconds of the shot clock and a higher ... Read More

And the links for the rest of the day's games...
Dartmouth vs Siena
Bryant vs Vermont
Hampton vs St. Bonaventure
Richmond vs Duke
Boston U vs Colgate
Marist vs Air Force
Bellarmine vs High Point
Denver vs North Carolina
Rutgers vs Stony Brook
UMBC vs Towson
Drexel vs LIU
Robert Morris vs Mercer
Loyola vs Lafayette
Detroit vs Marquette
NJIT vs Wagner
Manhattan vs St. John's
UMass vs Yale
Hofstra vs Villanova
Johns Hopkins vs Virginia
Brown vs Providence
Monmouth vs Saint Joseph's
Binghamton vs Bucknell
Harvard vs Fairfield
Maryland vs Notre Dame
Navy vs Lehigh
Penn State vs Penn
UMass-Lowell vs Merrimack

Today's Live Win Probability Links

- Holy Cross vs Army
- Cleveland State vs Canisius
- Hobart vs Syracuse
- Utah vs Jacksonville

Here's my Top-20 for the week.

Whatever happened to those Monday morning rankings of individual players who added the most to a team's win, or loss even. I used to love those rankings as it gave us a little sense of who was the Tewy favorite.

Of course when I last saw them TDLerlan was #1 every week with his incredible Face off %.

Is it possible to bring those back?
GOBIGRED
Joewillie78