Beyond the Basics: The Fan Favorites

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. Beyond the Basics took a hiatus this season, but we are back for an NCAA tournament preview.

There are just 44 Division I lacrosse games left this year, which would be bittersweet if those 44 games were not all do-or-die contests between the best teams in the country. But in the lull before the storm, I thought it would be fun to look at the tournaments through the lens of fan expectations.

For the past few years, I’ve run a Bracket Challenge, in the same style as ESPN does for the NCAA basketball tournaments. (Why should basketball have all the fun?) Fans pick who they think will win each game, all the way up through Memorial Day Weekend. The upshot is that this gives us a good way to see who fans think will hoist those beautiful chestnut-brown wooden trophies.

Today, I’ll go through the men's and women's teams who were most often picked as champion and share a bit of statistical context for why they might be the ones left standing. (Percentages reflect submitted brackets as of 8 p.m. on Tuesday. The Bracket Challenge will be accepting entries until the first games, so these may change.)

NORTHWESTERN WLAX

Picked as champion in 51% of brackets.

Can Izzy Scane and Co. bring another title to the (for a few months anyway) sunny shores of Lake Michigan? The fans certainly think so. The Wildcats were chosen as champs in the highest percentage of brackets in either tournament.

Scane, the variably numbered Northwestern star, is one of the front-runners for the Tewaaraton, and for good reason. Ignoring the narrative value of her return from injury, she has put together the second-most productive offensive season of anyone in Division I women’s lacrosse.

I calculate an EGA metric where EGA stands for “expected goals added.” EGA is designed to be a catch-all metric for any field player to compare apples-to-apples. It's like WAR in baseball or PER in basketball. EGA is derived by adding up the expected value of every instance in which a player appears in the play-by-play logs. If you remove the value created on draw controls (since not every offensive star takes draws), we can get to an offensive end version of EGA. Here are the top five players in the nation (using EGA/gm):

• Ellie Masera (Stony Brook), 5.52 EGA/gm

• Izzy Scane (Northwestern), 4.98 EGA/gm

• Brigid Duffy (Army), 4.92 EGA/gm

• Autumn McHenry (Saint Francis), 4.86 EGA/gm

• Arden Tierney (Richmond), 4.84 EGA/gm

NOTRE DAME MLAX

Picked as champion in 30% of brackets.

The Irish are the statistical darlings of Division I men’s lacrosse this year. As the Efficiency Matrix shows, no team can hang with Notre Dame in terms of opponent adjusted efficiency on the offensive and defensive end. They head into the NCAA tournament as the best defense in the nation (20.0% adjusted efficiency) and the second-best offense behind Virginia (39.8% adjusted efficiency). 

It’s true that the perennial Achilles’ heel (faceoffs) is back to worrying Notre Dame fans; after they finished sixth in 2021, they were 32nd in 2022 and 40th this year. But if you like the chances of the Irish hoisting the trophy, you are pinning those hopes on the fact that the defense has been incredibly difficult to score on. And with that offense humming, maybe a faceoff deficit won’t matter.

SYRACUSE WLAX

Picked as champion in 16% of brackets.

If Kayla Treanor’s squad reaches the promised land on Memorial Day, it seems likely that it’ll be on the back of the best opponent-adjusted offense in the nation. The Syracuse offense has put up a 41.5% opponent-adjusted offensive efficiency. The next best in the ACC is North Carolina at 37.9%. That means that Clemson (sixth in the conference) is closer to UNC in second than the Heels are to the Orange. 

And if you think Cuse was close last year, consider that their offense ended the 2021 season ranked 14th in adjusted efficiency. Could the difference between the best offense in the country and the 14th be a national championship trophy?

VIRGINIA MLAX

Picked as champion in 27% of brackets.

By one measure, the Cavaliers actually had the best resume of any team in D-I men’s lacrosse. I calculate a Strength-of-Record metric (RPI SOR) using only the RPI rankings of the teams on the schedule. Seventy-six points for beating the No. 1 RPI team. One point for beating the last ranked RPI team. (There is a bit more to it than that, but that’s the general idea.)

Using this metric to compare resumes, you don’t have to penalize teams for beating lower-ranked opponents. A win over a lesser team doesn’t help much, but it does improve your resume. Conversely, a loss to a great opponent won’t hurt your resume much, but it certainly won’t improve it. 

Duke had the most impressive set of victories of any team (239 RPI SOR win points), but their loss to Jacksonville meant that Virginia, Georgetown, Notre Dame and Syracuse all had less damaging losses. The top three by RPI SOR ended up being the top three seeds, but the ordering is a bit switched:

• Virginia - 235 SOR win points - 5 SOR loss points = 230 RPI SOR points

• Notre Dame - 229 - 4 = 226

• Duke - 239 - 21 = 218

BOSTON COLLEGE WLAX

Picked as champion in 8% of brackets.

No Charlotte North, no problem. Nabbing the final bye with the No. 3 seed, Boston College has set themselves up for another appearance this Memorial Day Weekend. Skeptical about their chances without one of the game’s brightest stars? 

It’s tempting to point to goalie play as the important offsetting improvement. Shea Dolce, the freshman goaltender for BC, has the Eagles ranked 16th in opponent adjusted save percentage after they finished last year ranked 58th. But the defense weathered pedestrian goalie play last year. They finished 2022 ranked ninth in opponent-adjusted defensive efficiency. This year’s team is sixth. That’s not earth-shatteringly better despite the better goalie save percentage.

I think what it’s going to come down to is how well the two offensive stars can stand up to the stout defenses they are likely to face in the later rounds. Belle Smith (88th percentile for EGA/gm) and Jenn Medjid (96th percentile for EGA/gm) have both stepped up their game to fill the shoes left behind with North’s elevation to AU lacrosse. 

Medjid may be the key. In their 15 victories, she has scored 4.2 goals/game on 7.5 shots/game (56% shooting). In their three losses, she’s had roughly the same opportunity (6.7 shots/game), but opposing defenses have made her less effective. In those three losses, she has shot just 35% and generated a lone assist.

DUKE MLAX

Picked as champion in 19% of brackets.

Brennan O’Neill has put together a great campaign for Coach Danowski and the Duke Blue Devils. His usage-adjusted-EGA (which is an overall efficiency metric) is in the 86th percentile nationally, and his raw production numbers (EGA/gm) are in the top percentile. This isn’t a Tewaaraton piece, but he’s definitely in the mix. As the graphic shows, there is an “efficient frontier” of sorts developing among the contenders. 

You could draw a line from Cormier, through Handley and Brandau, then connecting O’Neill with Kavanagh and Shellenberger. Those are the five watch list players who can say that no one player has been better at both shooting the ball (vertical axis) and generating offense for others (horizontal axis).

THE OTHER CONTENDERS

Outside of these big six contenders, several other teams have been picked by some entries.

In the women's tournament, here are the other contenders and the number of entries that have them bringing home the hardware:

• Virginia, 3 brackets

• North Carolina, 2 brackets

• Denver, 1 bracket

• Notre Dame, 1 bracket

• Maryland, 1 bracket

• Michigan, 1 bracket

And in the men's tournament:

• Maryland, 12 brackets

• Johns Hopkins, 7 brackets

• Cornell, 5 brackets

• Georgetown, 4 brackets

• Princeton, 3 brackets

• Michigan, 3 brackets

• Penn State, 2 brackets

• Yale, 2 brackets

• Army, 1 bracket

IT’S NOT TOO LATE

Have you filled out your bracket yet? The challenge is open for new entries until the first games kick off. It takes all of 30 seconds from start to finish (depending on how rigorous your research is).

You can set up a group to compete against friends, fill out an individual bracket or even just use the interactive bracket tool to generate a bracket so that you can share your picks. There is a separate bracket challenge for the D-I men's tournament and the D-I women's tournament. Happy bracketing!