College Sports Forum

College Sports Forum

College sports fan talk.

2019 NCAA Men's Lacrosse Stat Review

+3 HS
beserkr29's picture
January 23, 2019 at 9:23am
6 Comments

Lacrosse and analytics have gone together like oil and water for most of recorded history. Personally, I think it's because, like soccer, there are very few set outcomes in lacrosse. No one lines up after 20 seconds to prepare, runs a set play with set parameters, with a specific, measurable outcome no matter what happens.

The game is fluid, chaotic, and hard to quantify to the level of baseball or football. That said, with more emphasis on data across the landscape, it's a good time to try and really dig into the stats we have available.

And, to say so myself, I think there are some really solid indicators and trends to look at.

To preface, I took the final stats from all of this past year's Final Four teams, 9 national title winners (including 2018 DII champ Merrimack), Virginia's 2018 stats, and the past two years' worth of Buckeye stats.

I will be the first to admit I am not a statistician, but I can manage averages and did some rudimentary statistic invention. What follows is a series of offensive and defensive markers that indicate how good or poor a team is, with explanations of the stats themselves, and context on why a certain number is good or bad, in my opinion.

Offense

Offensively, everyone wants goals. End of day, goals are how you win. From a weak toss to the 110-mph cannon, they count the same. And, surprise surprise, they matter a lot if you want to win a title.

Of the 9 championship teams I included, the average goals per game was 13.71. If you put in the 3 other Final Four teams from 2018, that average falls to 13.55. Only 3 total teams, and 2 title teams, averaged under 13 goals per game.

Maryland's 2018 team averaged 11.22 goals per game, which resulted in their crashing out of Championship weekend against Duke. Unless you are an elite, elite defense (sub-8 goals per game allowed), the standard to win a title is 13 goals per game.

Last year, the Buckeyes averaged 8.93. And, as we all saw, it was a rough, rough offensive year. Obiviously, goals per game is a really broad marker for success. You score a lot, you'll probably win. There are other ways to judge offensive success, however, that give more layers on a teams strengths or weaknesses.

My personal preference for offensive efficiency is shot percentage. I like it because it is the most granular measure of a team's ability to score. On a shot, only two things happen: you score or you don't.

There's no variance like you find in possession efficiency. A freshman tossing the ball 8 feet over a wide open cutter isn't an outlier affecting your percentage one or the other, it's only focused on how successful shooters are.

And, the variance between the two is minimal. Cornell had the highest shot percentage in D1 in 2018, at 38.9%. Their offensive efficiency? 36%.

As a non-math person, that doesn't seem significant enough to quibble over and go through extra work. Now, off the soapbox.

Teams that go to championship weekend shoot very slightly over 33%. If you want to be successful, i.e. get to the Final Four and/or win a title, you HAVE to shoot around that 33% mark. Only one of the title teams (2012 Loyola) I used shot under 30% (29.9%), and they were so good defensively that they could get away with it.

Every single 2018 Final Four team shot above 32% for the year, the lowest being 32.6% (Albany). Even Maryland, the weakest offensive team, shot 35.6%. Ohio State scored on 26.9% of its shots in 2018. That's abysmal.

In 2017, the Buckeyes were at 33.5%, incredibly efficient. If the Buckeyes are going to take the next step to perennial power status, they HAVE to get better shooting the ball.

As an aside, the difference between shooting off the dodge and shooting off the catch is really interesting, and plays into my prejudices regarding Tre Leclaire's usage in the offense.

In the NBA, shooting off the catch (no dribbles) is about 11% more efficient than off the dribble. That's just for general NBA talent. You take the best shooters in the world, and focus on ball movement, you get the Warriors.

From a lacrosse standpoint, why Tre Leclaire, Ohio State's best shooter with his feet set, is given ball-handling responsibilities is beyond me. Part of it, I think, is that in 2018 the Buckeyes only had 1 player capable of beating anyone off the dodge in Jack Jasinski. That's it.

DeBerry had a flash or two, but hadn't taken the step to B1G lacrosse yet. Leclaire is serviceable with the ball in his stick, but in my opinion should be told to be two passes away from Jasinski at all times, ready to shoot.

A two-man offense focused on Jasinski dodging and Leclaire picking for him is interesting too, given their skillsets. Either way, if the 2019 Buckeyes are to be successful, they HAVE to find a way to get Leclaire the ball in space.

Part of the shot percentage metric is how often are all the shots you take hitting some part of the goal? For elite teams, that number is 63%, on average. For title-winning teams, this translates to 498 shots on target, of 790 taken.

Taking that one step further, with title teams in my dataset averaging 265 goals, 53.2% of shots on target will result in goals. For OSU in 2018, that number was 44.7% of SOG resulting in goals. That's really not good.

A slight ray of hope is that the Buckeyes had a nearly identical SOG% in 2018 as they did in 2017. Their scoring percentage was 10% higher in 2017, however.

Bottomline, the Buckeyes HAVE to get better shooting the ball this season, or it will be more of the same from 2018.

In line with shooting percentages is a fairly simple calculation for Average Shooting Margin (ASM). Scoring 40% of your shots is great, but if you're shooting fewer shots than your opponent, it's not going to help you win as often as you would think.

For all champions and the 2018 Final Four participants, average shots per game was 40.2, with the ASM coming in at +8.1. Simply, the elite teams in this dataset took an extra 8 shots per game over their opponents. That's 8 more opportunities to score.

Take out 2018's Final Four teams, and those numbers jump to 40.9 shots a game and +9.0 ASM. Why is ASM important in my eyes? Two of the four teams in the semifinals were significantly below the +8.1 ASM benchmark.

Maryland came in at -0.3, and Duke was only +4.4 in ASM. That left an insanely thin margin of error for those teams to pull out victories. Maryland was the worst 2018 team in this category, but was actually outdone by the 2017 Buckeyes, who were -1.0 in ASM.

OSU was +3.9 in 2018. I won't claim that Average Shot Margin is a game-changing stat, but I think it does a lot to put offensive and defensive effectiveness in perspective.

Finally, for purely offensive statistics, I took an interest in Man Up percentage. Dave Huntley, a famous and influential Canadian coach who helped Canada beat the US in 2014 using analytics and won an MLL title, was firm in his belief that Man Up is overrated.

His reasoning centered around opportunities and the fairly low number of Man Up goals scored in a season. I won't be foolish enough to say that's incorrect, but I personally think the conversion % is an indication of overall offensive efficiency.

Specifically, as very few teams actually have the guts to dodge on Man Up, it's an indicator of how effective a team is able to be purely passing the ball to the open man. And I think that logic is borne out in the data.

For all title and Final Four teams, the Man Up conversion % was 46.7%. That is really, really good. For just title teams, that figure is 46.1%. 2 of Duke's title teams managed to win with a sub-40% conversion rate, but the next lowest was 41.2% (2018 Merrimack).

Albany only converted 37.5% of their opportunities, and we saw what happened against Yale's D in 6-on-6. Maryland, who I just maligned for being outshot, converted an insane 58.1% of their Man Up opportunities. I don't believe that Man Up is the answer in and of itself, but I think the numbers show the metric is reflective of the health of an offense.

Ohio State only managed to convert a ghastly 27.3% of its Man Up opportunities in 2018. Given how few goals the team scored as a whole, it makes sense. 2017's squad converted 49.2% of its opportunities. And we've been through that team's successes on offense.

None of these things were particularly groundbreaking, but they provide some interesting metrics to see just how good the offense can be in comparison to elite teams.

Remembering, of course, that the data comes from full seasons, not a few games. In 2018, the Buckeyes poured 16 goals on Boston, only to collapse the rest of the year. About halfway through, we should see just how good this team is.

Defense

This section is essentially the same as offense, but with an inverted success marker. All of the stats that were high on O should be low on D. And, for the elite teams, they are.

First and foremost, goals per game allowed. Goals are the end all and be all of lacrosse, and as such should be the main focus. And, spoiler alert, the Buckeyes have had a championship-caliber defense for a long, long time.

Even last year, when the offense was essentially a junior varsity squad, the Buckeyes only gave up 8.6 goals per game. In 2017, that figure was 8.38. Given the number of poor and failed possessions in 2018 on offense, the 8.60 figure is a minor miracle.

From a title perspective, the average allowed by championship teams is 8.72 goals per game. 2013 Duke and UNC's title team in 2016 are the only squads I used to have an average over 10 goals per game allowed.

Really, as we go through these, UNC's run in 2016 is easily the least predictable title in recent history. Their defense was mediocre in the extreme, but Chris Cloutier went out of his mind for 4 games to carry them to the title. Point being, Ohio State is really close to being an elite team each year, if the offense can recover its 2017 form.

Needs are being and have been addressed in recruiting, but we need to see end product on the field.

Stepping off my soapbox, Shot % allowed is just as indicative, in my view, of defensive ability as Shot % is for offense. It might be even more valuable defensively, as to my mind it speaks to a defense's ability to contest shots.

Sure, a Caused Turnover is fantastic, but the average margin in CTs for title teams is +30. Average that over 19 games, and it adds 1.6 possessions per game. While yard sales get the cheers, contesting shots wins games.

Elite teams invariably keep opponents under 30% in Shot %. Except, of course, UNC in 2016. No team was worse than UNC on defense in this dataset. Even 2018 Virginia, who struggled defensively, managed a better Shot % allowed than UNC.

The average for title teams in Shot % allowed is 27.3%. Ohio State allowed opponents to score 29.4% of their shots in 2018. Not fantastic, but still above average. In 2017, the Buckeyes were a few points better at 24.1%. That should give you an idea of exactly why the Buckeyes were so good on the magical run to the title game.

The always spectacular defense was finally paired with an above-average O, and magic happened. When it becomes commonplace in Columbus, the Buckeyes will be right there with the blue bloods of the sport.

From Shot %, we go to SOG % allowed. These two metrics are the most telling when it comes to defensive performance, as logically you would expect fewer shots scored on to be an extension of fewer shots on goal.

And, to make the point, SOG % allowed is very clearly an indicator of how successful your defense is. Let me preface this with singing the praises of the 2017 Buckeyes. Out of 15 teams analyzed, none had a lower SOG % allowed. None. Not even 2012 Loyola, who was maybe the best defensive team in recent memory in D1 to win a title.

The 2017 Buckeyes allowed 52.7% of shots to be on goal, a paltry number. For all Final Four and title teams, that number is 56.5%. For just champions, it comes in at a slightly lower 55.9%.

The worst of the title teams I looked at was UNC (of course), with 59.5%. 2018 Albany, who looked incredible leading up to their semifinal against Yale (watch their game against Syracuse on Youtube), allowed opponents to get 61.0% of their shots on goal. That's not a title winning team.

It's a game of tiny inches, and being that (relatively) poor defensively is going to get you in trouble against the elite teams. And we saw what Yale did.

All this talk about shot % and SOG % leads directly into the Average Shot Margin. It's been extensively covered in the offensive section, so I won't dwell, but I will reiterate that title-winning teams have a +9.0 ASM. Part of that is holding opponents to just 31.9 shots per game. Team defense at its finest there.

Man Down, much like Man Up for me, is less an end and more a symptom of how disciplined a defensive unit is. Dave Huntley's point about limited opportunities is valid, but the percentages don't lie. When you keep opponents' conversion % down, you are a more elite team.

For all title and Final Four teams, opponents converted just 32.2% of Man Up opportunities. Title teams were slightly higher at 32.4%. Only 2015 Denver was above 40% at 42.9%, though Denver only went Man Down 49 times that year. Elite teams average 64 Man Down opportunities.

Also helping Denver was their 60.3% conversion rate on Man Up that year, a mind-blowing number. I highlight the Man Down % because it only accentuates the qualities of a good defense: communication, help defense, ball awareness, etc.

The stat tells you how good a defense is in an easily measurable, controlled microcosm.

Finally, for defense, we come to assist margin. If you remember the beginning of this tome, I mentioned that shot % can increase dramatically off the catch vs. the dodge. And, defensively, the only trackable way to see that trend in action is assist margin. And that's a pretty interesting datapoint.

For all championship weekend teams, and title-winning teams alone, the average assist margin for a season is +60. No team had fewer that 113 assists in making the Final Four. Ohio State had 117 assists in 2017, but only had an assist margin of +28 that year.

UNC won a title with a +7 assist margin (worst title team EVER), but no other champion had an assist margin under +50. Merrimack had an assist margin of +103 in 2018 on their way to an easy title win.

The Buckeyes only had 70 assists overall in 2018! To my original point, forcing teams to score unassisted, while using shots off the catch to pour in goals, is the recipe for success. If putting Jackson Reid and Tre Leclaire in the midfield will accomplish that, I am all for it.

Hopefully this provided some interesting insight into what makes elite teams elite, and what makes bad teams bad. If nothing else, you should take away the fact that Ohio State has a really, really good defense year after year, and only offensive output will determine this team's long-term success.

I am very excited to see the new blood in this year's squad, and hope it translates into an uptick in the measures I covered.

9 days until the new season.

Go Bucks!

This is a forum post from a site member. It does not represent the views of Eleven Warriors unless otherwise noted.

View 6 Comments