Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Is there really less depth at the top in the women's game?
The general consensus seems to be that there is a greater dropoff between the best teams in the women's game and the middle tier teams, compared to the dropoff in the open division. I am not really going to try to dispute that viewpoint here. What I am going to do is dispute that the scores in open games, versus those in women's games, actually suggest that.
Take this example:
In an open game, team A commits 14% fewer turnovers than team B over the course of the game.
In a women's game, team A commits 16% fewer turnovers than team B over the course of the game.
Based on this information alone, would you conclude that the talent gap between teams A and B is much smaller on the open side than the women's side? I doubt it. It's more likely you would conclude that the teams are similarly evenly matched and that the 2% difference in the gap is too small to draw conclusions from.
Now, here comes the twist:
In the open game, team A committed 6 turnovers to team B's 7, and won by 2.
In the women's game, team A committed 26 turnovers to team B's 31, and won by 6.
Based on this information, you would be tempted to conclude that the open game was a tight match between equals, while the women's game was a blowout between two teams that were playing on different levels. But this is really a statistical artifact of the different turnover rates in the women's game versus the open game. Because there are fewer turnovers in open ultimate, there is less opportunity for teams to pile up a high margin of victory based on a slight edge in scoring efficiency.
Again, I'm not arguing that there is not a larger dropoff in the women's game than in the open game. What I'm arguing is that the scoring gaps alone don't suggest that. They are just a reflection of the different turnover rates in women's and open. What the above does suggest is that the results in women's are less random than open, since a small efficiency gap has more chance to snowball into a safe lead.
Some may have already figured this out, but teams A and B are the winners and losers of the 2006 UPA club finals.
Take this example:
In an open game, team A commits 14% fewer turnovers than team B over the course of the game.
In a women's game, team A commits 16% fewer turnovers than team B over the course of the game.
Based on this information alone, would you conclude that the talent gap between teams A and B is much smaller on the open side than the women's side? I doubt it. It's more likely you would conclude that the teams are similarly evenly matched and that the 2% difference in the gap is too small to draw conclusions from.
Now, here comes the twist:
In the open game, team A committed 6 turnovers to team B's 7, and won by 2.
In the women's game, team A committed 26 turnovers to team B's 31, and won by 6.
Based on this information, you would be tempted to conclude that the open game was a tight match between equals, while the women's game was a blowout between two teams that were playing on different levels. But this is really a statistical artifact of the different turnover rates in the women's game versus the open game. Because there are fewer turnovers in open ultimate, there is less opportunity for teams to pile up a high margin of victory based on a slight edge in scoring efficiency.
Again, I'm not arguing that there is not a larger dropoff in the women's game than in the open game. What I'm arguing is that the scoring gaps alone don't suggest that. They are just a reflection of the different turnover rates in women's and open. What the above does suggest is that the results in women's are less random than open, since a small efficiency gap has more chance to snowball into a safe lead.
Some may have already figured this out, but teams A and B are the winners and losers of the 2006 UPA club finals.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Two for Eighteen, BABY!
In the summer of 1997, I played in my first two leagues - DC "competitive" league and DC "corporate" league. The corporate league playoffs were first, and my team (Bethesda-Chevy Chase Alumni, a high school that I didn't attend) won the championship. One league, one championship. This stuff is easy! My team was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the 20-team competitive league the next weekend, but still, one for two wasn't bad. (Coincidentally, these were the last two league teams I played on for which I wasn't good enough to be a starter. At least, I'd like to think that's a coincidence.)
Fast forward to yesterday. I was working on a 0-16 streak of winning league titles, dating back to 1997, and stretching across leagues all over this great nation of ours. My team was the sixth seed of eight teams in Denver's winter outdoor league. The league was played at night on fieldturf under the lights, but for the tournament we were blessed with a calm, sunny Denver spring day. In the first game, we threw zone on the three seed and jumped out to a 4-0 lead before our opponent's captain (a former IU and Union Crew guy) showed up. His handling along with that of the other club vets (including the only Johnny Bravo player in the league) proved to be too much for our zone, and we ended up giving up the lead by halftime, 7-6. But we switched to man and went on another run to take the game by two at the cap.
Semifinals pitted our heroes against the two seed, another team with a pair of talented players - this time, the only two male players that Bad Larry had added to their roster in fall 2006. Again, we got a quick 4-0 lead with the zone, but this time, we were wise enough to switch to man as soon as the other team called time out to collect themselves. They tried a zone of their own, but only a fool thinks they can trap me on the line. We coasted with the lead and ended up winning by two after allowing a late mini-run.
Finals were against the four seed, which had ousted the hated top seed in the semifinals. (I say "hated" because the top seed was a bunch of fast but lesser-skilled players who played huck-and-zone all the time, and I would have found it galling if that style had won the league.) Once again, our opponents had a pair of extremely talented male players - probably the best high school player in the city, and fellow Brown alum (and O-team player for the 2005 champs) Reid Hopkins. They also had the high school player's twin sister, who was one of the top women in the league. Unlike the rest of the league games, the finals were played on a full width field, which we discovered made our zone fairly useless. We discovered this by spotting our opponents a 5-2 lead. We embraced the wide-open spaces and big throws (not much of a stretch for me) and quickly climbed back, taking half 8-7. From there out it was a tight game with its share of crowd-pleasing big plays, and the bad guys had a lead as late as 10-9, but we managed to make a few more big throws work and won by two.
Championship! Two for eighteen, baby.
Although my overall record in league play is well over 500, championships have eluded me. What made this one different? Well, a couple things. The most obvious is that I had two really top notch teammates: Dan "Pokey" Hunt, a Mamabird vet who plays on Boulder's Boomslang, and Jesse Burnette, a 6'6" former Midwest college player who has played club in the area as well. As I mentioned, those other teams had pairs of club-level men, but we always had a mismatch at at least one spot when we put our best lines out. Throw in one other tall club vet and we had the top matchups on our side.
On the other end of the roster, our captain (Jesse) had used his lower picks on a bunch of athletic guys he knew who had basically never played ultimate before. While none of them learned a good flick by season's end, all had learned to catch and dump and how to play a couple positions in a zone. Even if their skills didn't dramatically improve, their decision making did, and that made all the difference.
All the teams we played probably had at least one woman who could beat the coverage of any of our women, but the (not unfortunate for us, but unfortunate in general) fact of the matter is that at the league level, particularly in a 5-2 gender ratio league, having the best women is a luxury, not a necessity. (This is why I think Denver's spring league has made a great choice by including a men's league. Not only could the men's league be great, but the diversion of male players will probably allow the mixed divisions to both use a 4/3 ratio, which makes the women matter a lot more.) When the chips were down, our long game overcame our shortcomings.
To a degree, how successful a league team is depends on how clear-eyed that team is at evaluating its talents and picking the best strategy. The team that had the best regular season record (the fast but lower skilled huck-and-zone team) may have been annoying to play against, but the fact is, they were probably the most strategically optimal team in the league, and this nearly overcame their lack of club players.
Sometimes league presents me with a moral quandary: do I throw underneath to a player who might drop the disc, makes bad throwing choices, and doesn't dump very well? Or do I just put the disc in the endzone and hope for the best? The second is the maximum-likelihood scoring choice, but if you make that choice every time, you will not be very popular (unless your team is unusually rational about these things). Of course, sometimes you have the better "wait for one of the top players to get open" choice, but not always. On this team I generally slanted toward throwing underneath during the regular season and switched a bit toward the more selfish/rational choices yesterday. Things seemed to work out fine.
Fast forward to yesterday. I was working on a 0-16 streak of winning league titles, dating back to 1997, and stretching across leagues all over this great nation of ours. My team was the sixth seed of eight teams in Denver's winter outdoor league. The league was played at night on fieldturf under the lights, but for the tournament we were blessed with a calm, sunny Denver spring day. In the first game, we threw zone on the three seed and jumped out to a 4-0 lead before our opponent's captain (a former IU and Union Crew guy) showed up. His handling along with that of the other club vets (including the only Johnny Bravo player in the league) proved to be too much for our zone, and we ended up giving up the lead by halftime, 7-6. But we switched to man and went on another run to take the game by two at the cap.
Semifinals pitted our heroes against the two seed, another team with a pair of talented players - this time, the only two male players that Bad Larry had added to their roster in fall 2006. Again, we got a quick 4-0 lead with the zone, but this time, we were wise enough to switch to man as soon as the other team called time out to collect themselves. They tried a zone of their own, but only a fool thinks they can trap me on the line. We coasted with the lead and ended up winning by two after allowing a late mini-run.
Finals were against the four seed, which had ousted the hated top seed in the semifinals. (I say "hated" because the top seed was a bunch of fast but lesser-skilled players who played huck-and-zone all the time, and I would have found it galling if that style had won the league.) Once again, our opponents had a pair of extremely talented male players - probably the best high school player in the city, and fellow Brown alum (and O-team player for the 2005 champs) Reid Hopkins. They also had the high school player's twin sister, who was one of the top women in the league. Unlike the rest of the league games, the finals were played on a full width field, which we discovered made our zone fairly useless. We discovered this by spotting our opponents a 5-2 lead. We embraced the wide-open spaces and big throws (not much of a stretch for me) and quickly climbed back, taking half 8-7. From there out it was a tight game with its share of crowd-pleasing big plays, and the bad guys had a lead as late as 10-9, but we managed to make a few more big throws work and won by two.
Championship! Two for eighteen, baby.
Although my overall record in league play is well over 500, championships have eluded me. What made this one different? Well, a couple things. The most obvious is that I had two really top notch teammates: Dan "Pokey" Hunt, a Mamabird vet who plays on Boulder's Boomslang, and Jesse Burnette, a 6'6" former Midwest college player who has played club in the area as well. As I mentioned, those other teams had pairs of club-level men, but we always had a mismatch at at least one spot when we put our best lines out. Throw in one other tall club vet and we had the top matchups on our side.
On the other end of the roster, our captain (Jesse) had used his lower picks on a bunch of athletic guys he knew who had basically never played ultimate before. While none of them learned a good flick by season's end, all had learned to catch and dump and how to play a couple positions in a zone. Even if their skills didn't dramatically improve, their decision making did, and that made all the difference.
All the teams we played probably had at least one woman who could beat the coverage of any of our women, but the (not unfortunate for us, but unfortunate in general) fact of the matter is that at the league level, particularly in a 5-2 gender ratio league, having the best women is a luxury, not a necessity. (This is why I think Denver's spring league has made a great choice by including a men's league. Not only could the men's league be great, but the diversion of male players will probably allow the mixed divisions to both use a 4/3 ratio, which makes the women matter a lot more.) When the chips were down, our long game overcame our shortcomings.
To a degree, how successful a league team is depends on how clear-eyed that team is at evaluating its talents and picking the best strategy. The team that had the best regular season record (the fast but lower skilled huck-and-zone team) may have been annoying to play against, but the fact is, they were probably the most strategically optimal team in the league, and this nearly overcame their lack of club players.
Sometimes league presents me with a moral quandary: do I throw underneath to a player who might drop the disc, makes bad throwing choices, and doesn't dump very well? Or do I just put the disc in the endzone and hope for the best? The second is the maximum-likelihood scoring choice, but if you make that choice every time, you will not be very popular (unless your team is unusually rational about these things). Of course, sometimes you have the better "wait for one of the top players to get open" choice, but not always. On this team I generally slanted toward throwing underneath during the regular season and switched a bit toward the more selfish/rational choices yesterday. Things seemed to work out fine.
