Each week, we will look back at the games that were to see which players had the largest individual performances. I say largest because the contributions that we can measure (from play by play) tend to be things that are easy to count. This includes, goals, shots, assists, turnovers, penalties, etc. We can’t measure a defender who shuts down an opposing player so completely that she doesn’t even touch the ball. Still, it is interesting to be able to identify the players that really filled it up each weekend and give them a shout out here.
For a bit of background, in order to rank single game performances, we needed a way to condense box score stats to a single number for each player. In order to do this, we relied on our expected goal values methodology, which assigns a goal value to each type of play depending on how often it leads to a goal in the next 60 seconds. By adding up all the expected goals added for each player, we can get to that single number and these rankings.
We have also tagged each performance with the opponent’s ELO rating. The higher the number, the stronger the opponent. This should help to give some context for each performance. Did the player feast on the dregs of D1 or did they put up these numbers against a quality opponent?
Click on any player’s name or the PRO logo () and you’ll head straight to the detailed breakdown on their LacrosseReference PRO page. As opposed to last year, all players appearing in the weekly rundown are unlocked and the information on their page is available to all readers.
Top Single Game Scores of the week
#1 – Siena Gore (Kennesaw State) – 11.47 goals added
Mar 20 vs Presbyterian Opp ELO: 646
There are 2 sides to the Siena Gore story. On the one hand, she’s just putting up insane numbers. She’s been neck and neck with Charlotte North all season for the cumulative and per-game EGA lead. Her game against Presbyterian is another example. 9 goals on 11 shots and throw in 2 assists and 11 draw controls for good measure.
The other side of this coin is that she’s now played 5 different teams with defensive efficiency marks in the triple digits. I get the criticism that these are inflated stats because of the opponents. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be celebrating a player who is doing everything you could ask a lacrosse player to do. (Except turnovers; gotta work on the turnovers.)
The battle for Northeastern Ohio Division I Women’s lacrosse supremacy went to Youngstown in a thriller last Thursday. The Penguins last 3 games have all been one-goal nailbiters, which has to got to be fun for their players and fans. Stressful, but fun.
So far, it seems like the offense goes as Calandra-Ryan goes. Her play shares have not been all that different across her last 3 games (12.9%, 13.6% and 10.6%), so it’s not as if she’s getting shut off or anything. But her production numbers have been all over the place.
Still, the Kent State game was her best game of the year, both in overall production (9.63 EGA) and in terms of efficiency (3.54 uaEGA). Her appearance on the scene has been a big part of the huge strides this offense has taken year-over-year. Games like this are proof.
Gerow makes her third EGA-list appearance of the year with her best game of the year. 9.40 EGA is not quite a career high, but it is her best mark this season. But total EGA doesn’t mean efficient in all cases. In this case it does. And this was a career best in terms of usage-adjusted-EGA, which measures individual player efficiency.
And let’s not forget that the team as a whole is continuing to light up the score board. The UMBC offense is up to #22 in the nation in terms of opponent-adjusted-efficiency.
The Irish offense is getting into gear. Against Yale, it was Maddie Howe’s turn to be the first option. Her 10.8% play share in this game was the highest she’s been this year and the 5th highest of her career.
Now, I should qualify my first statement. The Irish offense, when you ignore the strength of the opponent has been trending up. When you account for the opposing defenses, it’s a bit more flat.
So if they’ve leveled out to their “true” performance level, the question is whether having the 13th rated opponent-adjusted offense is going to be enough to compete in the loaded ACC.
The trade-off between aggressiveness and ball security is one of the more interesting in my mind. If you ask an aggressive player to be more secure with the ball, do you lose more production than you gain in possession? Elms is a good case in point. Her ball security rating this year is 45 (out of 100), which is down from 80 last year. She’s averaging 2.00 TO/gm after just 1.14 last year.
But her shooting percentage rating is up from 53 to 81 and she’s also averaging more assists this year. To me, in this case, it’s a wash. Her overall player efficiency rating (usage-adjusted-EGA) is at 97, up from 94 last year. I think if she’s coughing the ball up a bit more in the process of generating more offense for her teammates and getting herself to better spots, it seems like a trade that Coach McCord will be happy to make.
19 draw controls!?!?! I’ve got 43 career games in the old database for Harder, and her previous career high in draws was 7. How do you go 43 games with no more than 7 draw controls and then decide to come out and have 19.
Granted, this was one highest-scoring, fastest-paced games you are going to see this year, but still: 19 draw controls?!?!
You definitely get the sense that opposing defenses are trying to make sure that Abby Hormes isn’t the one to beat them. And so far, High Point really hasn’t had a great answer when their opponents have been successful.
But on this day, as the Panthers got their first win of the year, there wasn’t much Elon could do. And it wasn’t that Hormes was left alone to go take a ton of shots (she only had 7). She was just uber-efficient. Her 6 goals came on 7 shots. Adding 2 assists adds some spice.
High Point is one of those teams where the win-loss record does not tell the real story. So far, they’ve played 6 games, and 5 of them were against top-30 defenses.
Their raw offensive efficiency rating is 94th, but when you account for the opponents faced, they are 69th. That’s a very different picture.
Against Canisius, Pascale set a new career-high in play shares, which means that this was the game where she had her largest impact over 25 career games. Compare her production numbers in this one to what she did against Drexel a week ago. Against Drexel, she had 5 goals on 9 shots. In this one, 4 goals on 7 shots. It was everything else that she did against the Griffins that earned her a spot on this list. 5 assists and 5 ground balls added some punch.
As with a lot of young players, the difference was ball security. Against Drexel, she had just one turnover. Against Canisius, she had 3. She’s been pretty good on ball security this year (83 rating out of 100), but as her role grows, that’s an area to watch out for. For a high efficiency player, the challenge is always going to be how do you maintain that efficiency when your role increases and opponents start to key on you.
Like, absurdly steadily. That means that as her role has increased, she’s been able to produce even more offense, even accounting for the increased role. That is player evolution at it’s best. Her game against RMU was her 3rd most efficient game of the year. And that is saying something since she had 4 turnovers to go with her 10 points.
And for Siskind, it was another game in what has been an incredibly impressive turnaround from last year. So far, among the big 3 offensive stats (shooting, assist rate, ball security), her improvement in shooting percentage stands out. Assist rate is her best category this year, but last year, she was just a 24 (out of 100) on shooting, so the jump there stands out a bit more.
The entire reason for LacrosseReference to exist is to make it more fun to be a lacrosse fan, parent, player, or coach. What began in a bar with an empty Google search for an NCAA game win probability has become the sport’s leading source for non-vanilla stats, analytics, and insights. Thank you to those who’ve been following along since 2015 and welcome to those who are just discovering how LacrosseReference makes it more fun to follow college lacrosse.
) and you’ll head straight to the detailed breakdown on their LacrosseReference PRO page. As opposed to last year, all players appearing in the weekly rundown are unlocked and the information on their page is available to all readers.
