“The fact of being an underdog changes people in ways that we often fail to appreciate. It opens doors and creates opportunities and enlightens and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable.” — Malcolm Gladwell
In sports (and politics) an upset occurs when an underdog defeats a seemingly more skilled opponent to defy conventional wisdom. The word itself conjures up feelings of agitation, distress, unsettled, shock, or confusion. The first three of these in line with emotions experienced by the favorite who lost, and their fans. Perhaps the last couple a mild response by those belonging to the wisdom of the crowd. Wouldn’t a dog winner be sensing anything but being upset? Sometimes the winners of upsets are asked, “Did luck come into play?” Any competitor, even the most dubious victor of all, would take offense to it. Then tactfully offer some witty response such as “Luck is the residue of preparation and a catalyst to opportunity, and we had both working for us today.” Hoping to politely shut down the one asking, knowing (s)he is characterizing the result as an upset. It all comes down to whose perspective matters in the moment. Reminds me of an old George Carlin joke, “Ah, look at the cute little kitty cat playing with the mouse – Bull-Crap! The mouse doesn’t feel that way!” Admittedly, the joke loses its luster a tad bit without the benefit of Carlin’s inflection and wacky expressions telling it, and those who know of the man certainly recognize he never would have used the word “crap,” either. i.e. Carlin was notorious for his foul mouth, so click above at your own risk.
I came across a 100-year-old story suggesting the expression came about when a horse named “Upset” gave the Thoroughbred Racehorse of the 20th Century, Man o’ War, his only loss, ever. Man o’ War broke 7 speed records over 21 races in two years, including the Preakness. He also won the Belmont by 20 lengths, and even once raced at odds as short as 1 to 100. The mathematician in me would like to tell you this means he had about a 99% chance to win that race, but what it really means is that you’d have to bet $100 in order to win just $1. Only now it dawns on me the word “upset” in a sporting context didn’t really get its meaning from a horse whose very name is evidence to the contrary, but instead a term likely invented by gamblers who lost their money on what they considered to be a “lock.” However, there’s no such thing in sport as a “lock”! Just ask the 1980 Soviet Union Olympic Ice Hockey team or the 2008 New England Patriots squad which was almost perfect – ALMOST.
The first 3 days of the D3 Men’s Volleyball season took place last weekend with a consensus for two noteworthy upsets. On Friday evening, January 10th, Mount Union defeated defending National Champion Cal-Lu, traveling nearly 2,425 miles for the opportunity. All the experts had the Kingsman among the top 10 in the country with 40% (12) of the coaches in the AVCA Poll alone, having ranked them #1. This compared to the Purple Raiders, a good team believed to be ranked somewhere in the 30’s and voted 3rd best in the MCVL Coaches Pre-season Poll. Then, on Sunday, just 48 hours removed from the first day shocker, Westminster, a new program from Fulton, Missouri, having hit the road to travel more than 1,000 miles to Utica, NY finished their weekend slate by defeating a Misericordia team who was a consensus Top 20 team in America.
The win-probability for a home favorite with a T100 metric 4 points better than its opponent, such as Cal-Lu’s relative to Mount Union’s was on Friday, is north of 95%. This means the Purple Raiders willed less than a 5% chance into fruition. Twenty-four hours later they were defeated by Santa Cruz, 3-0, to take a little shine off that victory, but they still have the chance to avenge that loss playing the Slugs again, only this one at home on January 24th, a week from Friday. Not reading too much into what the MU common opponent means to these two Independents, as the Kingsmen and the Banana Slugs are set to play each other two times, still – Once in just a couple days (Friday, January 17th) and again on the last Saturday of the regular season in April. On the topic of Independents. With Cal-Lu’s trip North to Santa Cruz this weekend, having already been scheduled to play them, Dominican, New Paltz, & Carthage over a mere 42-hour span, I suspect this might have been a major reason for why Springfield, literally in their backyard this weekend near Irvine, was unable to schedule a match in 2025. (or in 2024, 2023, 2022, and so on… – LOL)
The win probability for a favorite having 8 points more in a T100 rating is … (drum roll please) … wait for it… 99.75%. That was thought to be the state regarding Misericordia & Westminster last Sunday before their game. We can believe either Westminster had a 1 in 400 chance to defeat Coach Wingert’s Cougars when they achieved this result or that there is more to the story. In statistics, when observing an outcome presumed to have a 1 in 400 chance to have occurred, we can believe it did and marvel at the fact while risking being wrong about it, or we can believe it didn’t, with a willingness to live with a mistake for that choice, instead. It sure seems like one of those times to reject the former and embrace the latter! What’s that mean, exactly? Well, for one, Westminster is a new program which makes the T100 rating, or any other expert ranking, one lacking in confidence. Massey, T100, & Inside Hitter all had them ranked above 100th, simply because none of us knew. Information is King, and now we surely know they aren’t a triple digit rank within the landscape. Not even close. What we still don’t know for sure is where they ought to be, just yet. Massey presently says 47th and T100 has them at 71st – IH posted them at 52nd about an hour ago. Massey’s rank probably too low due to a small sample size while the T100 is built to refuse a single match moving the dial too severely based on one outcome. Maybe Inside Hitter, like Baby Bear in the Goldilocks saga has it, “…just right.” Anyhow, the higher variability with new programs almost always makes it take a little longer for the math to know what’s what. As I mentioned before – Information is King.
If theoretical probability determined by equations using rating metrics has an issue for determining the magnitude of an upset, then how might we seek to better understand it? The answer is related to, “You know when you know!” Meaning it is better understood retrospectively having established who the teams are and where they’re pegged along the landscape’s strength spectrum. Even the new NPI understands this because it rates every team’s SOS based on who they are now rather than who they were when they played. The best I can do is offer a win matrix. No, not one for the 50ish games played by just a quarter of the teams across the land thus far. Rather, the final win-matrix from last year (2024) which shows the truth about the incidence of these rare events being determined as a function of the ranks of any two opponents. All we presently know is a team ranked 28th defeated one now ranked 12th (It was #36 vs. #7 just a few days ago – No longer that!) And then there is a 71st ranked team having defeated a 32nd ranked opponent a couple days later. (It started as a #101 vs. a #16 before any competition was played last week.) The graphic below shows where these pairs of teams are ranked now, relative to last year’s win-matrix using the T100. It, like the one from the year earlier, and the year before that, will look very similar to this year’s after 15 weeks’ time and 1300+ tiny black pixels appropriately placed. All “upsets” from ’24 are located beneath the main diagonal in one of the 3 regions I refer to as “UNO.” Upset matches whose outcomes are retrospectively determined as ordinary, notable, or unreal. Take a look.
In case there are some wondering which match from last year falls deepest into the “Unreal” Region above, it was the UVC’s last ranked team defeating its conference champion on March 9th, 2024 – Elmira 3 NYU 0, outscoring the National Semi-Finalist by 14 points while out-hitting them 0.271 to 0.130. We’ve got that rematch to look forward to on February 28th in NYC at 7 pm. Put it on the calendar right next to every other UVC conference match and buckle up.
An upset is like lightning. Forecasters can’t predict when or where it will happen, only that it will happen more often given specific precursors or indicators on the horizon. However, for those out there who play the game, the best way to predict your team’s “upset future,” intent to either prevent it from happening to your team if you’re the favorite, or to facilitate one in your team’s favor should you be the dog, is to simply go make it happen. There is no destiny in Men’s D3 Volleyball! Like Smith-Barney, you have to eaaaaaaaaarn it!
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