Our quantitative way to highlight the best games of a busy slate. See below for the explainer.
Game of Interest #1Sacred HeartStony Brook1211See Our RecapTension Game Score: 42★ ★ ★The tension game score for this game was 42, which indicates an extremely close nail-biter.Sacred Heart Min. Win Probability: 8%★ ★ ★The lowest win probability that Sacred Heart had at any point during the game was 8%, which means that this was a “happens-a-couple-times-a-year” type comeback.Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 17★The victory means a transfer of 17 Lax-ELO points from Stony Brook to Sacred Heart. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Sacred Heart moves from 49th to 47th nationally; Stony Brook goes from 50th to 54th.Game Stars
Sacred Heart
Max Tuttle
6.22 EGA
Drew Edwards
2.51 EGA
Reed Avveduti
2.02 EGA
Stony Brook
Cory Vanginhoven
2.95 EGA
Tom Haun
2.26 EGA
Chris Pickel Jr
2.1 EGA
Game of Interest #1Sacred HeartStony Brook1211See Our RecapTension Game Score: 42★ ★ ★The tension game score for this game was 42, which indicates an extremely close nail-biter.Sacred Heart Min. Win Probability: 8%★ ★ ★The lowest win probability that Sacred Heart had at any point during the game was 8%, which means that this was a “happens-a-couple-times-a-year” type comeback.Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 17★The victory means a transfer of 17 Lax-ELO points from Stony Brook to Sacred Heart. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Sacred Heart moves from 49th to 47th nationally; Stony Brook goes from 50th to 54th.
Game of Interest #2Mount St MarysRichmond1211See Our RecapRichmond was certainly riding high coming into this one, but that just goes to show you how easy it is to get upended in this chaotic 2019 season.
Mount needed a goal from Luke Frankeny with literally 1 second remaining to send this one to overtime. The Spiders scored a goal with 8:21 left in Q4 to go up 2 goals. At that point, MSM’s win probability was sub-20%.
Nice comeback to even get this thing to overtime. Frankeny was the story in this one, as he led all players with 4.54 EGA. Chris DiPretoro was just behind him with 4.30.
Tension Game Score: 59★ ★ ★The tension game score for this game was 59, which indicates an extremely close nail-biter.Mount St Marys Min. Win Probability: 10%★ ★ ★The lowest win probability that Mount St Marys had at any point during the game was 10%, which suggests that you would not fault those that switched over to something more compelling.Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 19★The victory means a transfer of 19 Lax-ELO points from Richmond to Mount St Marys. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Mount St Marys moves from 61st to 58th nationally; Richmond goes from 19th to 27th.Game Stars
Mount St Marys
Luke Frankeny
4.54 EGA
Chris Dipretoro
4.3 EGA
Sam Stephan
3.15 EGA
Richmond
Tyler Shoults
3.46 EGA
Teddy Hatfield
2.17 EGA
Tate Gallagher
2.02 EGA
Game of Interest #2Mount St MarysRichmond1211See Our RecapRichmond was certainly riding high coming into this one, but that just goes to show you how easy it is to get upended in this chaotic 2019 season.
Mount needed a goal from Luke Frankeny with literally 1 second remaining to send this one to overtime. The Spiders scored a goal with 8:21 left in Q4 to go up 2 goals. At that point, MSM’s win probability was sub-20%.
Nice comeback to even get this thing to overtime. Frankeny was the story in this one, as he led all players with 4.54 EGA. Chris DiPretoro was just behind him with 4.30.
Tension Game Score: 59★ ★ ★The tension game score for this game was 59, which indicates an extremely close nail-biter.Mount St Marys Min. Win Probability: 10%★ ★ ★The lowest win probability that Mount St Marys had at any point during the game was 10%, which suggests that you would not fault those that switched over to something more compelling.Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 19★The victory means a transfer of 19 Lax-ELO points from Richmond to Mount St Marys. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Mount St Marys moves from 61st to 58th nationally; Richmond goes from 19th to 27th.
Game of Interest #3PrincetonNavy1911See Our RecapTension Game Score: 139★The tension game score for this game was 139, which means that it was not a very tight affair for the most part.Princeton Min. Win Probability: 50%★The lowest win probability that Princeton had at any point during the game was 50%, which tells us that the eventual victory was never really in doubt.Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 53★ ★ ★The victory means a transfer of 53 Lax-ELO points from Navy to Princeton. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Princeton moves from 17th to 11th nationally; Navy goes from 28th to 39th.Game Stars
Princeton
Michael Sowers
6.07 EGA
Emmet Cordrey
4.84 EGA
Chris Brown
3.62 EGA
Navy
Greyson Torain
3.67 EGA
Ryan Wade
3.49 EGA
Christian Daniel
3.17 EGA
Game of Interest #3PrincetonNavy1911See Our RecapTension Game Score: 139★The tension game score for this game was 139, which means that it was not a very tight affair for the most part.Princeton Min. Win Probability: 50%★The lowest win probability that Princeton had at any point during the game was 50%, which tells us that the eventual victory was never really in doubt.Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 53★ ★ ★The victory means a transfer of 53 Lax-ELO points from Navy to Princeton. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Princeton moves from 17th to 11th nationally; Navy goes from 28th to 39th.
When we are blessed with a day in which the slate of games numbers in the dozens, it is all but impossible to really keep track of all the goings on in D1 lacrosse. So we decided to put out a daily digest of the day that was. The idea here is to use some metrics that we can calculate for each game as a way to highlight the most meaningful or interesting matchups.
To rank games, we will be using three values:
Tension Game Score – a measure of how tight the game was. A back-and-forth match up where neither team is able to take control is going to have a lower tension score (i.e. smaller gap between the teams).
Min. Win Probability – the lowest win probability value that our model ascribed to the eventual winner during the course of the game. A game where the winner had to make a huge comeback is probably going to have a very low win probability (think about the moment that it seemed least likely that they’d come back).
Lax-ELO Transfer – a measure of how much an intridual game did to make us re-assess how good a certain team was. In a game where a favorite beats the underdog by as much as we thought they would, you don’t really update your priors about how good each team is. Those games would also transfer a relatively small number of Lax-ELO points.
We will present the metrics for each game, along with a star-based indicator to tell you how common or uncommon that outcome is. For example, a game in which the winning team had a win probability in the single digits is a rare occurence and would get 3 stars in that category.
We welcome your feedback, and we hope that this helps you to distill down the craziness of a full lacrosse slate into a more digestible list of highlights.