D1 vs. D3 Part II (Stick Skills)
Overview
Welcome to part two of the Division 1 (D1) vs Division 3 (D3) debate. In my first article, Lacrosse Myths: Debunking the size difference between Division 1 and Division 3, I analyzed the height and weight for the top 70 lacrosse teams between D1 and D3. My conclusion was that there was no real distinguishing difference between D1 and D3 players. So if there was no real distinguishable difference in size, what was it that held me back from going D1? Could it possibly be that avoiding my left land like the plague was the culprit for my inability to play D1 lacrosse? Thus, I decided to check and see if there was a difference between D1 and D3 when it comes to stick skills? Do D1 players on average have statistically better stick skills than D3 players?
So I am just going to address the big old parade of elephants in the room (fun fact a group of elephants is called a parade). First elephant, I recognize that comparing D1 stats, statistics that are based on D1 teams playing D1 teams, to D3 stats, statistics that are based on D3 playing D3 teams is not a perfect comparison. Trust me, I know. Second elephant, I understand that looking at college statistics instead of high school statistics is misleading since it is not a level playing ground since the players have already been separated into divisions. For all of those people who are arguing that I should look at high school statistics, do you have a website that already has the statistics of all the high school players and separated it by what college they are attending? Oh you don’t. Interesting, I couldn’t find that website either. Third elephant in the room (in case you’re wondering it’s a fairly large room), to all of the people saying that in order to truly evaluate players I should watch game film to see how far away the goals are to see if D1 players have more range? I agree, are you willing to pay me to watch hours of game film? Oh, you’re not. Ok, great, glad we got that out of the way. I will make do with the data I have available to me to conduct an analysis; in the time I have available to undertake this investigation. I recognize it is not perfect. To quote a former captain of the Wesleyan College lacrosse team (more famous for coaching football): “It is what it is.”
Lastly, I recognize that the original intent of looking at the stick skills was to evaluate the players and not the game. The more I analyzed the data, the more I realized that I was not evaluating players so much as making general inferences on the difference between the D1 and D3 game. By that I mean answering questions such as, do D3 players on average turn the ball over more? Do they take more shots? Can they hit the net more? In order to evaluate the D3 game, I decided to leverage my business school education (shout out to Babson College), and break down the game as if it was a business through key performance indicators (KPIs). Just like how a financial analyst would use publically available information (SEC filings, 10Ks, annual reports, yahoo finance, etc.), I also utilized public statistics that teams post (through conference websites or archived statistics). Due to the limits of the information that is publically available, I could not get into enhanced stats such as shot speed, time of ball in stick, and so on. Also quick side note, if anyone knows of the sales guy/girl who sold “enhanced stats” to college athletic departments, an enhanced stats window which is the same data table as an xml or html but with a filter button, forward them this blog. If they can convince colleges to basically just buy excel and teach them how to use the filter button, then (s)he can definitely sell this blog. Rant over. Now we’re onto the KPIs.
The KPIs are listed as followed.
Why these KPIs?
The point of this investigation is to determine if the stick skills for D1 were better than D3. I was not looking at whether the players were better, but whether the stick skills were better. For instance, ground balls are a great metric to look at in D3 to see which team is scrappier and, generally speaking, if you lose the ground ball game, then you lose the game. Ground balls aren’t a metric for stick skills though, thus they are not included in this study. Therefore, I wanted to make sure that all of the indicators related in some way to stick skills.
Offense
Shooting % on net – Are D1 players more accurate with their shooting? You can’t score if you can’t hit the net. Metric: Shots on net / Total Shots
Shooting % Goals – Are D1 players converting more shots into goals. Typically speaking, you usually score when you shoot the ball faster and more accurately. Metric: Goals / Total Shots.
Assist % - Do D1 players generate more assists on average more than D3 players? I will admit that this is a stretch of a metric and can understand some people believing this should not be included in the study but, bear with me for a second. In order to get an assist, you have to make both a good throw and good catch. In addition, you aren’t relying on one player dodging and beating an entire team. Thus, the teams that are able to get more assists, generally speaking, should have stronger stick skills as assisted goals require more stick skills of the players. Metric: Assist / Goal
Turnover per game - Do D1 players turn the ball over more? Generally speaking, in order to turn the ball over you have to either be stripped or throw the ball away (I get that you can also go offside or commit other penalties, but I am assuming those penalties would be consistent between D1 & D3 (e.g., both would have 3 a game (or some other number)). Metric: Turnovers / Game
Defense / Goalie
Caused Turnover a game – Are D1 players able to cause more turnovers than D3 players? This is another metrics that I am going to need you to work with me. I understand that different teams play different defenses and some defenses play more conservative. I also get that if you have an offense and face off guy that is really good, your team will be on defense less and thus have less opportunities to turn the ball over. With all of that being said, if you look to some of the best defensemen they have great sticks and are able to throw more effective stick checks. This metric gave me one more lens to evaluate defensive players stick skills. Metric: Caused turnovers / game
Clearing % - Are D1 teams able to clear more effectively? In order to clear the ball, once again it usually requires a couple of passes and stick skills to cradle against the other team throwing a check (or two). The biggest x factor in games is usually the clearing because if one team has a player who can’t catch or cradle you usually lock off and let him carry it up knowing he will lose the ball. If a goalie cannot make a break out pass, your team is going to be stuck on defense for a heck of a lot more time. Also, sometimes goalies are so good at clearing passes; they can really help spark the offense (see highlights of former SU goalie John Galloway). Metric: Successful clears / Total Clears
Save % - Do D1 goalies save the ball on average more than a D3 goalie? Pretty self-explanatory one. Metric: Saves / Shots on net.
Results
Before, I start breaking these down further, I got more ‘splainin’ to do than Lucy. After looking, at these numbers you are probably thinking, how in the world can the D1 Shooting % Goals be lower but the Save % higher. Trust me that stumped me for a while too. Here is my best guess to describe what is happening.
The problem is three fold. First, a lot of these numbers were calculated and rounded to 2 decimal places. Thus, there is going to be a rounding error, which is going to cause the numbers to not align perfectly. Second, teams don’t always record stats in the exact same way. Sometimes one team will say their goalie had 10 saves, while if you check the other box score for the other team it says the goalie has 9 saves. Those are also going to cause a difference. Third, as Voltaire said “to err is to be human.” I am still using excel to plug in all of the information, and had to hand type in all of the information (another side note--I really, really, really need to build an enterprise data warehouse to store all of this information so I don’t have to use excel). I am concerned that somewhere in there I typed in some wrong number.
Offense
Offensively speaking, D1 players are able to put the ball on net about the same as D3 players. Additionally, the teams are scoring at about the same rate. What is more interesting (and worth noting) is that if you break down the teams into total ranking, you can see a clear pattern that the better the team the more likely they are able to get shots on net.
As you can see there is a strong correlation between the team ranking and the teams shooting percentage. When you plot the data on a scatter graph you can see a nice trend line.
D1 Scoring Trend line
Thus on average depending on average what ranking you are, 2% of your shots hit the net more, causing 2.5% more shots going in the net. Therefore, while height is not a measure for success in D1, there is a clear correlation with stick skills. This makes sense that since size doesn’t differentiate the teams, the average stick skills of a top 10 team will trump the average stick skills of a lower team causing them to win more (apologies to anyone offended for using the words “trump” and “win” in the same sentence).
D3 Shooting Trend Lines
When you look at the same plot for D3, you don’t see as strong of a trend line. In fact, it contains one number that lies outside the tread line, and the other three conferences are all about 60% shooting % on net. However, if you look at the shooting % goals you are able to see that the top programs are able to convert more of their shots on a consistent basis. While this could be a variety of factors (coaching strategies, etc), it also leads me to believe that the top programs shoot the ball faster and more accurately (closer to the corners when shooting) than lower program teams. This also explains why Salisbury and other top D1 programs stayed away from my 50 mph worm burner right down the middle.
Lastly, it is interesting to note that D3 teams turn the ball over 2 more times per game than D1 teams. While I have not looked at game films from an analytical perspective, having played in and watched a lot of college lacrosse games, I can only speculate as to what is causing this difference, but more on that below.
Defense / Goalie
Defensemen in D3 create more caused turn overs per game (unlike the shooting anomaly this statistic checks out with the other statistics from above). Once again, this could be due to the pace of play, or it could mean that D3 defensemen are better than D3 offensive players (whereas D1 offensive and defensive players have more parity), so D3 teams are able to cause more turn overs than D1 teams. Stated differently, the difference between D1 and D3 is on the defensive side of the field, where defense makes a greater difference in the outcome off the game. In D3, six out of the top 10 teams caused more than 10 turnovers a game, out of the remaining 60 teams in the study only 8 teams caused more than 10 turnovers a game. Thus, having a top defense that is able to make stops and cause turnovers is paramount to becoming a dominant team.
If you look at the same statistics in D1, there is more parity when it comes to turning the ball over. Once again, while pure speculation, this could be because in D1 the average stick skills are stronger and it is tougher for defenseman even on top teams to strip the offensive player.
Another reason, why I believe that D1 offensive players are slightly more gifted is because, while D3 defenseman can cause more turnovers if you look at the clearing %, D1 is strong in each bracket. Thus it is implying that D1 has slightly stronger stick skills despite causing less turn overs.
Conclusion
So what can we come to conclude after looking at both the size and stick skills of players between D1 and D3? Well, I think we can all agree that in order to better evaluate the difference in players; we would need to look at additional information (e.g., high school statistics). With that being said, I think we can also agree that the game while the game is similar between D1 and D3, D1 players tend to have slightly stronger stick skills. In addition, we learned that defense has more of an impact in the D3 game than the D1 game. Nevertheless, to quote my old high school coach Ned Herter, “it’s a great day to play the game” no matter what level you prefer!
Other Statistics for fun
