Indomitable City Soccer - What Went Wrong: A Three Part SeriesA Sacramento Republic FC community2016-02-01T08:03:03-08:00http://www.indomitablecitysoccer.com/rss/stream/106430092016-02-01T08:03:03-08:002016-02-01T08:03:03-08:00Costly One Goal Games Hurt Republic in 2015
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<figcaption>Photo Credit: Sacramento Republic FC/Douglas Taylor</figcaption>
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<p>In the second installment of his What Went Wrong series, Evan Eyster takes a look at how much Sacramento Republic's 2015 season was hurt by close one-goal losses.</p> <p>There is nothing like the nail biting finish of pulling out a one goal victory, and no pain like watching a last minute attack slip away in a one goal defeat. Unfortunately for Sacramento Republic fans, they saw more of the latter than the former last season.</p>
<p>In 2015, Sacramento won only 5 of their 11 games that were decided by a single goal. This 45% win percentage in one goal games left them tied with Pittsburgh Riverhounds for 15th best of 24 teams across USL, only finishing ahead of one playoff team, Louisville City FC (who won 3 of 7 games decided by one goal). However, the big difference comes when you compare the 2015 Republic team to the 2014 version.</p>
<p>In 2014, Sacramento won six more one goal games than they lost, meaning in 2015 they had a seven game swing (+6 to -1) in these close games. That is a stunning 21 points fewer gained in 2015 in games that were decided by one goal. Only one team in all of USL had a harder drop from 2014 to 2015, and that was the Wilmington Hammerheads, who had a +3 spread in 2014 only to lose 8 games by one goal in 2015.</p>
<p>If we want to indulge in a mild adjustment and suppose that teams in a longer sample would revert towards the norm by drawing half of their games that were decided by one goal (Sacramento has a -1 spread, so drawing half of that one net loss increases their total by +0.5), the playoff picture in the West would have been shaken up.</p>
<p>This proves to me that Sacramento simply finished below the norm, when even an adjustment that all teams revert to a near even split of results in one goal games is enough to put them at the top of the table in a close Western Conference.</p>
<p>Using binomial distribution, which is a method for determining number of successes (in this case wins) in a sample size, we see that a team that would win 50% of its one goal games in the long term would still finish with the results of Sacramento just under 30% of the time. Under this adjustment, the first round byes would have been taken by Sacramento Republic and Colorado Springs Switchbacks, who both would have been at 46.5 points. Orange County Blues and Oklahoma City Energy would have shared the 3rd seed with 45.5 points apiece, while LA would remain in 5th and Seattle in 6th with the minor point adjustment.</p>
<p>It is possible to beat the odds, but I do not think that Sacramento really regressed in this case. Sacramento was simply unlucky. Bad runs happen, favorites lose. With Sacramento winning 62% of their games that resulted in one team or another taking all three points, you can easily argue that they would win at least 50% of one goal games. While this is something that needs to be monitored moving forward with more game planning of how to respond to being down a goal in the last 15 minutes of the game, I am not overly concerned about the regression in this category.</p>
<p>This was the second part of at three part series looking at what went wrong for Sacramento Republic in 2015. In the final part of the series, I will be looking at the difference from 2014 to 2015 in regard to Sacramento's winning and losing streaks.</p>
https://www.indomitablecitysoccer.com/2016/2/1/10813784/what-went-wrong-costly-one-goal-games-hurt-sacramento-republic-2015eeyster2016-02-01T08:01:01-08:002016-02-01T08:01:01-08:00Republic's 2015 Season Hurt by Improved Opponents
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<figcaption>Photo Credit: Sacramento Republic FC/Douglas Taylor</figcaption>
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<p>In the first installment of his three-part What Went Wrong series, stats guru Evan Eyster takes a look at how the improvement in the overall quality of the USL hurt the Republic's 2015 season.</p> <div style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-touch-callout: none; padding: 15px 10px 5px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; line-height: 24px; color: #2d2d2d; font-family: Merriweather, sans-serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; min-height: 603px; direction: ltr;" placeholdertext="Share your story here..." dir="ltr" class="field ipad_field_content" id="zss_field_content">
<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px;">We all realize that the Republic took somewhat of a step back from 2014 to 2015. Not only was there a disappointing exit in the first round of playoffs to Los Dos — something not entirely unexpected seeing as the home team has won only three matchups all time between the two teams — but they also dropped nine points overall in points gained, allowed 3 more goals and scored 6 fewer goals.</p>
<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px;">Looking beyond those first numbers, there are three other patterns that help to explain the drop-off. This piece is the first of a three-part series covering each of those patterns, starting now with the simplest one: the increased strength of the Republic's USL opponents from 2014 to 2015.</p>
<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px;">The teams that returned to the USL Western Conference from 2014 made the following improvements or regressions in total points in 2015: Orange County Blue gained 19 points, Oklahoma City Energy gained 15, Arizona United dropped 1 point, Los Angeles Galaxy II dropped 6 and Sacramento Republic dropped 9. Excluding Sacramento, the returning teams averaged 6.75 points more than the 2014 season.</p>
<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px;">These four opponents made up ten games in Sacramento’s season. If you spread the 6.75 points over the 28 game regular season, Sacramento would gain 0.22 points per match less against those sides. Over 10 games, that accounts for 2.2 points. Those points make up the difference from Sacramento's 4th place finish last season to what would have been 1st. In a tight race, even improvements that add up to only a few results can be the difference between a first round bye and a first round loss.</p>
<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px;">The overall difficulty of the West increased as well, although the change was not massive. In 2015 the average USL opponent Sacramento faced averaged just short of 39 points. In 2014, the average Sacramento opponent averaged barely 38 points. If the average opponent was one point better, again if you spread that change in opponent strength over the season, it would account for a drop of one point from Sacramento at the end of the season.</p>
<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px;">All of these stats combine to form the final measuring stick to show how much the competition for Sacramento improved from 2014 to 2015. In 2014, the average team that Sacramento played averaged 1.35 points gained per match. In 2015 this number increased to 1.37 points gained per match. The difference in points gained per match is again nearly one full point at the end of the season.</p>
<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px;">Even though that may only account for one point, examination of playoff teams shows that Sacramento also played a more top heavy schedule in 2015 as compared to 2014. In 2014 Sacramento played 11 matches against teams that qualified for the playoffs in the 26 games — the 2 matches against <a class="sbn-auto-link" href="https://www.burgundywave.com/">Colorado Rapids</a> Reserves and <a class="sbn-auto-link" href="https://delete.sbnprivate.com/">Chivas USA</a> Reserves are being ignored because they could not qualify for the playoffs. In 2015 that number increased to 13 games against playoff teams in 28 matches. That makes for a total increase from 42.3% of matches against playoff teams in 2014 to 46.4% matches against playoff teams in 2015. The total matches played against strong teams went up, which you would expect to account for a drop in total points from Sacramento.</p>
<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px;">The league as a whole improved, and when the rest of the league improves, it's fair to expect the teams at the top of the table to take a step back. Only one team who recorded at least 40 points in 2014 improved in the 2015 season (Charleston Battery) and five of the 2014 playoff teams had fewer points in 2015.</p>
<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px;">This is the first part of a three part series taking a look at some of the numbers that help explain some of the regression that Sacramento saw between the 2014 and 2015 seasons. Next time we will concentrate on the difference between the two years of games that were decided by only one goal.</p>
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https://www.indomitablecitysoccer.com/2016/2/1/10878914/what-went-wrong-increased-opponent-strength-and-what-it-did-toeeyster