Before I jump into this week’s spotlight match between the T100’s 15th & 19th ranked teams from Lasell & New Paltz (AVCA has them at #20 & #22, respectively), I’ll comment on why I didn’t choose to go deeper on the Stevens vs. Springfield match being played on the same day just 4 hours later. No doubt #2 Stevens and #3 Springfield (#4 if you believe the coaches poll) has more demand for viewership given these are 2 of the better 3 (or 4) teams in the country. The perceived competitiveness between them should be about as good as it gets when they perform at Springfield’s Blake Arena tomorrow afternoon, too. So what gives?
Therein lies the reason. They are playing at Springfield’s Blake Arena! I have plenty of confidence in metrics pertaining to ratings, hitting efficiency, and other skill based stats related to the game in order to predict an unfolding story, but home court advantage isn’t among them. I HAVE to offer a token half-point rating advantage for home teams to accurately tilt a model in the correct direction to make the math work better, but to believe every team’s home court offers that same advantage borders on madness. Most teams play about 40% of their D3 contests at home, not 50%. This a consequence of many weekend invitationals promoting neutral location match opportunity. There are some every year who play no less than 60% of its games at home by managing scheduling to that end. Home favorites are significantly more likely to win weeknight than weekend matches, too. Maybe related to scheduling neighboring “David” programs often with a willingness to play away at “Goliaths” who are less willing to commit to weekend or a home/away series agreement? For example, I checked in on the eight UVC team’s schedules to see that just 39% of all non-conference D3 matches played will be at their home courts this year. I also checked in on the two teams from the match I decided to not dig into very far, noticing Springfield (63% home) and Stevens (45% home) D3 schedules, too.
You can see below that Stevens has a T100 rating .18 points better than Springfield’s, 18.19 to 18.01. The match taking place at Springfield on Saturday at 5:00 pm puts the Ducks at 45% compared to a neutral site where they would be 53% to win – Being the higher rated team, but not .5 points higher to compensate for a home court adjustment factor. Also, each of these teams are better than 99% to earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament this year, so I might argue a match between Lasell (~12% NB probability) and New Paltz (~12% National Bid probability, too) played at Elms carries no less leverage to alter the NCAA National Tournament landscape in 7 weeks. Especially considering these two teams already having played a combined 12 matches against top 10 teams in the country to this point.
The MORE composite shown above was missed this Tuesday, so I created it later in the week to compare where this week’s Spotlight teams are located, and to add to the dashboard offering perspective for either team in this matchup to come away with victory. I waited until this morning to see how the Hawks fared against Arcadia last evening – They completed a reverse sweep to get to 10-7 by showing some real grit. One could argue this outcome pinched these two even closer to each other in the queue of every rating system out there. The updated ratings seen above certainly suggest as much.
As is my method for this feature, I like to look at who the prominent hitters are for each team. Observing how often they get their opportunities, before taking a closer look at the team’s hitting efficiencies both for and against opponents on the spectrum of D3 quality of teams. This week, their age & experience, too. It looks like Lasell’s 4 most frequent hitters average beyond 22 years with at least an average of 3 seasons of D3 volleyball under their belt to date. The 5 most frequent NP hitters average a tick less than 20 years of age with only 1 having at least 3 years of D3 experience (Pat Wing). This might explain the Hawks latest surge – Youngsters starting to find their way. One thing for Lasell is clear, however. Their latest surge reflects upgrading their game to meet the challenge of giants, having played 3 matches against top 6 teams in the country in the last 8 days and winning half the sets played:
Lasell’s performance against the opponent spectrum is not only typically higher functioning than the Hawks, but is far more responsive when playing teams who are progressively lesser rated. The evidence for this being the position and the slope of the linear models indicated by the dark blue lines below. New Paltz defending opponents on the spectrum is comparable to the Lasers, but it consistently offers opponents of the same ilk an opportunity to earn slightly higher efficiency ratings. (The slope and position of the dark red lines indicate this below.) :
The bottom of the graphic above shows both teams achieving similar ace counts against opponents of like stature. And although Lasell errors from the stripe increase greatly as they play weaker teams, it seems as though for opponents whose strength mirrors New Paltz, they have lesser errors, and from that observation, believing they can slip ahead in the terminal game against New Paltz makes some sense, too.
With both teams already having 7 losses, it is easy to see how they lost ground in the polls to others who were winning earlier. However, it can be seen in later weeks each has rebounded from those defeats to be gaining some of that ground back. (Both trends are moving toward better ranked averages.)
The most obvious trait of the composite below is that the gold line intersection suggests Lasell’s hitting puts it among the best dozen teams in the nation. See where the New Paltz “blue lines” intersect closer to the 25th ranked mark. A more subtle way to read this graph is to look at the spaces between the highlighted points on the 15th and 19th ranked vertical lines that represent these two team’s efficiency expectations:
I watched Juniata roar back to win a 5th set against the Lasers at St. John Fisher’s gym earlier this season, only to see the home Cardinals repeat that same result right after. Last week, I saw Lasell go toe to toe with Wentworth, only to watch their chances melt away late, losing 3-1. Most recent, they gave Springfield all they could handle playing at their home court just a couple days ago, right after a match they cruised past a “Kim-less” Vassar squad 3-0. A player from another team was recently heard saying, “Lasell can’t finish.” I simply reminded him they just haven’t learned how, yet.
I know nothing about Lasers coach Jeff Vautrin other than his temperament is one which shows patience in his team arriving at a signature win sooner than later – Very impressed with a courtside demeanor with his squad under high pressure. There is no evidence for his team backing down to any challenge, even though to this point a close win has eluded them. The late-great Petty said it best, referring to Tom, not Richard as he is not late just yet, “I Won’t Back Down!” The King, as Richard is known, however, once made it perfectly clear “It isn’t the car that wins the race, it’s the driver.” To be fair, the car couldn’t rebut this sentiment, but if it could it might describe the success as a mutual effort, not so unlike this Laser team and its coach.
I have some mild concern with New Paltz ability to play as well away from home, particularly given how young they are on the whole. I do expect the Hawks to take no less than one set in this contest, but at the same time, I believe Lasell might learn a little bit about finishing, too. Maybe, for no other reason than the Hawks just haven’t shown themselves able to defeat an opponent in the top 20 to this moment. However, should New Paltz build some early momentum by taking at least one of the first 2 sets in this match, their chances abruptly change for the better because the Lasers still have to show they can win a match by a margin other than 3-0 regardless of what the math says about it.
Feel free to check in below to see any post match commentary after the contest is done. Also take note the T100 was updated on the home page through matches played Tuesday after my return from a not so sunny and not so warm Key Largo. With 30% of total time on aircraft spent standing still, waiting for either de-icing, removal of objects in the way, or for airline operators to move a bridge to disembark, and then another 2 hours to drive from Miami up to Lauderdale (30 miles) for an ELP concert, it is good to be back home where I have control over the time I choose to “burn!” This is more fun as it heats me up in a far more enthusiastic manner better for my mental health! Thanks for reading.
Post Match Follow-Up:
So much for the youngins’ not being able to generate enough fire-power today, and hooey on the notion that Pat Wing would take 25% of the swings as historically he had until this match. These two predictions couldn’t have been farther from the truth! It wasn’t that the youngins’ got much of a chance with 80% of the swings coming from Seniors and Wing (a grad student). Wing alone is surely in need of a cold one after swinging 56 of the 120 times. By a cold one I am referring to the ice-pack most certainly on his shoulder right about now. The unexpected New Paltz experience showed up large with only about 10% of the attempts coming from underclassmen hitters on this day. And the Hawks terminal game was pretty special, too. Generating 12 aces goes a long way to thwart any damage 20 service errors can do, especially when the opponent can only generate 4 of their own to the 19 gifts from the stripe to return the favor. Not literally “to return” given that in those 19 times the Hawks passers had no such action to perform.
The net result of Wing putting his team on his back allowed New Paltz to generate a H% almost .100 more than was projected, .342 to .244! The Lasell attack was nearly the forecasted .289 as the Lasers snuck in right around .265 for the match. It looks to me that Lasell wasn’t able to capitalize on a 37-35 marathon first set win as it seemingly galvanized the New Paltz squad to come back with a vengeance. Just ask the Arcadia folks about that, as they lived something similar first-hand in a reverse sweep less than 48 hours ago. Lesson learned – Never let numbers allow myself to under-estimate the mettle of the New Paltz Hawks again! Congrats to them for showing up in a big way to begin what might retrospectively become a linchpin moment for this team right before the UVC gets underway. My hunch is the coaches voting in the AVCA Poll will be putting them back on their ballots to a return into the Top 20 again on Tuesday, even though they have been notoriously slow to act on displacing current teams in the queue. However, in this case, Lasell might just have to do some more in the near future to show they belong back on their list sooner than later. Next week’s “Daily Double” on Saturday against Stevens and their progeny Steven-son is a good place for them to start.
Speaking of Stevens… Just noticed they prevailed at the Springfield gym just a bit ago. Looks like the last two were 25-23 in favor of the defending National Champions. This outcome will likely be enough of a point stealer to earn their way back into the top spot later tomorrow evening on the T100. (Massey also sees Stevens on the same perch, even before this win tonight.) However, do not expect the coaches to remove Wentworth until such a time they get tripped up. That is fair, given the computer rankings don’t have a memory of that match from a month ago as it imports the new games from this week into their algorithms.
Look for next week’s final installment of the Spotlight series on Friday to dissect the metrics regarding Vassar & Southern Virginia playing on the St. John Fisher campus the following day. The fourth neutral location match spotlighted this month. A consequence for the confounding home court can be at times.