Quite a bit of ink has been spilled over the Cuse changes that occurred after halftime. And surely, those were a big part of the comeback.
Less ink has been spilled over the Syracuse defense and face-off units and the job they did to hold Army to 7 goals. This was the first game of the year where Army faced a possession deficit (they were -7 against Syracuse). The Black Knights turned it over as much as they have in any game, but their shooting percentage was way down in this one.
Tension Game Score: 85
★ ★
The tension game score for this game was 85, which indicates a game that was more swing-y than tight throughout.
Syracuse Min. Win Probability: 15%
★ ★
The lowest win probability that Syracuse had at any point during the game was 15.2%, which suggests that you would not fault those that switched over to something more compelling.
Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 11
★
The victory means a transfer of 11 Lax-ELO points from Army to Syracuse. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Army moves from 15th to 17th nationally; Syracuse goes from 13th to 10th.
CSU couldn’t quite complete the weekend sweep out west, but they did play in two of the best games of the weekend. What makes this game somewhat notable is the fact that CSU got out to a 4-2 lead before Denver finished the game (after switching to Jack Thompson in net) on a 8-2 run.
Now, the switch seemed to galvanize the Denver defense, so I wouldn’t pin it all on the starting keeper. After the switch, the Vikings turned the ball over on fully two thirds of their 24 possessions. Their shooting percentage fell from 33% to 12%. Interestingly, on possessions where they did get a shot off, they were much quicker to fire away, probably because of the deficit they faced.
All in all, the goalie change seemed to be just what the Denver defense needed to get after the CSU offense.
Tension Game Score: 95
★
The tension game score for this game was 95, which means that it was not a very tight affair for the most part.
Denver Min. Win Probability: 20%
★ ★
The lowest win probability that Denver had at any point during the game was 20.5%, which suggests that you would not fault those that switched over to something more compelling.
Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 7
★
The victory means a transfer of 7 Lax-ELO points from Cleveland State to Denver. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Cleveland State moves from 47th to 48th nationally; Denver goes from 9th to 8th.
This game was all tied up at 2 with 9:26 in the 2nd quarter. I’m sure there were Irish fans out there starting to get worried about another brawl with Richmond that didn’t end in the Irish’s favor.
After that mark though, it was all Notre Dame. Pre-split, the Irish scored on 2 of 16 possessions (13%). Post-split, they scored on 11 of 30 possessions (37%). It was the kind of offensive barrage that you don’t typically associate with Corrigan’s team. The driver of the improvement was shooting percentage, as the Irish went from shooting 11% early to 29% as they built the lead.
Tension Game Score: 115
★
The tension game score for this game was 115, which means that it was not a very tight affair for the most part.
Notre Dame Min. Win Probability: 29%
★
The lowest win probability that Notre Dame had at any point during the game was 29.7%, which means that while things never get truly dire, this was an uphill battle.
Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 23
★
The victory means a transfer of 23 Lax-ELO points from Richmond to Notre Dame. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Richmond moves from 20th to 24th nationally; Notre Dame goes from 18th to 14th.
Game Stars
Notre Dame
Charles Leonard
5.18 EGA5.18
Pat Kavanagh
5.03 EGA5.03
Griffin Westlin
3.92 EGA3.92
Richmond
Ryan Lanchbury
1.69 EGA1.69
Mitch Savoca
1.53 EGA1.53
Tate Gallagher
1.08 EGA1.08
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.
