Beyond the Basics: Analyzing the Tewaaraton Top 25 Men's Nominees

Welcome to Beyond the Basics!

My name is Zack Capozzi, and I run LacrosseReference.com, which focuses on developing and sharing new statistics and models for the sport.

The folks at USA Lacrosse Magazine offered me a chance to share some of my observations in a weekly column, and I jumped at the chance. Come back every Tuesday to go beyond the box score in both men’s and women’s lacrosse.

With the Tewaaraton Watch lists out, I always like to take a look at the 25 players named and see what sort of statistical trends I can find within the group. I did something similar for the Division I women’s list last week, and now, it’s the men’s turn.

My goal here is not to necessarily argue for any specific player’s candidacy or suggest that someone should or shouldn’t be on the list. But I do think it’s interesting to take any sample of players and see what sort of statistical profiles you find. If nothing else, it does give you a sense of what sort of lens the committee is using to determine which players are most deserving of the recognition.

SCORING VS. ASSISTING

The first split I always like to look at is whether players are generally finishers or generally distributors. To be an offensive player on the list, you are either finishing at a high rate or generating a lot of offense for your teammates. (Or if you are Matt Brandau, both).

Excess goals per shot, which is what the vertical axis measures, takes into account the types of shots a player is taking and how often shots like them have gone in historically. From there, you can identify how many more goals the player has scored than an average shooter would have. Nobody has scored more goals than you’d expect than Brandau, although Logan Wisnauskas isn’t too far behind him.

Connor Shellenberger has been in the next tier of players with respect to shooting, but he’s got the highest assist rate of anyone on the list. Assist rate measures the number of assists a player generates relative to his play share.

PRODUCTION VS. EFFICIENCY

While I think it’s beginning to change, total points is still the stat that your average lacrosse fan on the street is going to cite when talking about the year an offensive player has had. If you went by total points per game, the top offensive players on the watch list would sort out Brandau, Wisnauskas, Chris Gray, Asher Nolting and Ryan Lanchbury.

But if I’m trying to measure overall production, I’m going to use EGA, which accounts for the good and bad that a player does on the field. The list looks different if you use EGA-per-game: Brandau, Pat Kavanagh, Gray, Nolting and Brennan O’Neill.

Still, no matter what metric you use to define it, overall production is a measure of pace and opportunity as much as it is performance. If you want to measure efficiency, which is what I think we really care about when we care about how successful a player has been, you use something else: usage-adjusted-EGA. If we sort the top offensive players by efficiency, the top of the list comes out as: Brandau, Wisnauskas, Shellenberger, O’Neill, Jack Myers.

Of course, the obvious takeaway is that no matter how you define performance, Matt Brandau has had the best statistical 2022 season of the 25 finalists.

MIDFIELD VS. ATTACK

One of the categories of comments that I got on the women’s article last week was about positions. Attackmen tend to take more shots, so they are going to have higher point and EGA totals. Well, it also looks like they are more likely to make the Tewaaraton Award Watch List.

Of the offensive players that showed up on the list, just three are midfielders (Jack Hannah, Tucker Dordevic and Sam Handley). And even the “M” designation is probably up for debate on some of those.

Now, this raises an interesting question about opportunity and role. Is there a midfielder who belongs on the Tewaaraton Award Watch List who isn’t there because his dual role prevents him from having the same opportunities that an attackman has to accumulate points?

My gut says no. I found 11 midfielders who had a play share of at least 5 percent (which means they were, at minimum, a key rotation player) and who took at least 17 percent of their team’s shots (which is the median number for the attackman on the Tewaaraton list). These midfielders had every opportunity to rack up the stats that the attackman did.

Of those, none had an efficiency rating better than any of the attackmen on the Watch List. Efficiency metrics can capture a player’s full contribution, accounting for his role, better than raw stats can. But even using an efficiency cut-off, today’s midfielders aren’t creating value the way the attackmen are.

A LITTLE EXTRA SPOTLIGHT

I always like to save some room at the end of a piece like this to take a moment to call out some players who weren’t selected for the Watch List but who have a statistical profile that should have at least put them in the conversation.

Timmy Ley (Boston U) is currently sitting in the 89th percentile for individual efficiency. The Terriers’ offense has been greatly improved this year, and Ley’s assist rate is certainly part of it. That’s his best metric, where he rates as a 91 out of 100.

Jacob Greiner (Jacksonville) has been an all-around weapon for the Dolphins’ offense this year. His strength has been in his lack of weakness. His percentile ratings for assist rate, ball security and shooting percentage are 73, 76, 77.

CJ Kirst (Cornell) burst on the scene this year as a key part of the Big Red attack. And as one of the younger players mentioned in this article, he’s a guy you might look at as a future Watch List candidate.

Matt Campbell (Villanova) has been one of the primary distributors for the Wildcats (along with Luke Keating). He’s currently in the 80th percentile for overall efficiency, in no small part due to a ball security rating that is in the 66th percentile. That might not seem like much, but Campbell is one of those guys that had terrible ball security issues and has steadily built that attribute of his game into a strength over his career.

LACROSSE STATS RESOURCES

My goal with this column is to introduce fans to a new way to enjoy lacrosse. “Expand your fandom” is the mantra. I want you to walk away thinking about the players and stories presented here in a new light. But I also understand that some of these concepts can take some time to sink in. And part of the reason for this column is, after all, to educate.

To help this process along, I have several resources that have helped hundreds of lacrosse fans and coaches to internalize these new statistical concepts. The first is a Stats Glossary that explains each of my statistical concepts in more detail than I could fit here. The second is a Stats 101 resource, which provides context for each of my statistics. What is a good number? Who’s the current leader? That’s all there.