I understand why scheduling mid-week games is difficult and why coaches don’t want to do it. This isn’t college basketball where the length of the season demands 2 games a week. In terms of preparations, it’s probably closer to football. But when you watch some of these mid-week games coming down the pipe, it really makes you wish we had two or three times as many games like this each week.
As a result of the loss, High Point is all but guaranteed to be a SoCon or bust team as far as the NCAA tournament. Encouragingly, they had their best game of the year. Their offensive average was 10 points better than their average coming in, thanks largely to a far better shooting percentage.
Tension Game Score: 78
★ ★
The tension game score for this game was 78, which indicates a game that was more swing-y than tight throughout.
Virginia Min. Win Probability: 20%
★ ★
The lowest win probability that Virginia had at any point during the game was 20.3%, which suggests that you would not fault those that switched over to something more compelling.
Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 6
★
The victory means a transfer of 6 Lax-ELO points from High Point to Virginia. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), High Point moves from 50th to 53rd nationally; Virginia goes from 13th to 14th.
Holy Cross is 4-1. Holy Cross has also barely outscored their opponents. This seems to suggest that we should discount their record, which is true to some degree.
But the game against Harvard showed us two different Holy Cross teams. Over the the first 6:42, they were outscored 4-0. Their first shot came after a quick 25 seconds and they obviously did not convert a single goal.
For the remaining 53 plus minutes, it was a different team. Most notably, the offense really slowed down, taking a full 10 extra seconds per possession to launch a shot. Their offensive efficiency jumped up to a respectable 29%.
The summary stats for Holy Cross show a team barely treading water. But a team that has Jekyll and Hyde tendencies can really break out if they can figure out how to banish Mr. Hyde.
Tension Game Score: 90
★
The tension game score for this game was 90, which means that it was not a very tight affair for the most part.
Holy Cross Min. Win Probability: 21%
★ ★
The lowest win probability that Holy Cross had at any point during the game was 22.0%, which suggests that you would not fault those that switched over to something more compelling.
Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 6
★
The victory means a transfer of 6 Lax-ELO points from Harvard to Holy Cross. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Harvard moves from 47th to 47th nationally; Holy Cross goes from 36th to 37th.
Georgetown is sneakily the 3rd best team in our Lax-ELO ratings. They finished well last year and have largely feasted on sub-par opponents so far this year.
They got off to a slow start in this one, which dovetails with the narrative that this is not a premiere team. Early in Q2, they were down 3-2 against MSM after all. But the Hoyas’ offense adjusted and found their rhythm, putting up a 38.7% efficiency mark over the final 3 quarters.
As we’ve mentioned many times, Jake Carraway is a real star, and this offense has the potential to take this team a long way. I will be watching them intently once the Big East slate kicks in.
Tension Game Score: 116
★
The tension game score for this game was 116, which means that it was not a very tight affair for the most part.
Georgetown Min. Win Probability: 21%
★ ★
The lowest win probability that Georgetown had at any point during the game was 21.7%, which suggests that you would not fault those that switched over to something more compelling.
Lax-ELO Points Transfer: 5
★
The victory means a transfer of 5 Lax-ELO points from Mount St Marys to Georgetown. As a result of this transfer (and the rest of the games played), Mount St Marys moves from 49th to 49th nationally; Georgetown goes from 4th to 3rd.
Game Stars
Georgetown
Jake Carraway
6.07 EGA6.07
James Reilly
5.8 EGA5.8
Declan Mcdermott
3.33 EGA3.33
Mount St Marys
Kadin Kightlinger
2.56 EGA2.56
Brenden Mccarthy
1.98 EGA1.98
Sam Stephan
1.81 EGA1.81
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.
