NESCAC

[PaulNewman]

Conn is going to hold the #3 spot in your head but no where else on the planet.  Enjoy the delusion.

I came out of retirement to give a +K for this one!

Yeah, I assume he's just trolling.  The line about Calvin could surpass Conn if they win the title is as crazy as it gets.  Maybe Michel doesn't realize Calvin is 22-1-1 or 23-1-1 and has been to the Final Four multiple times since 2015 and is there yet again.

[YoungBuck]

Conn is going to hold the #3 spot in your head but no where else on the planet.  Enjoy the delusion.

I came out of retirement to give a +K for this one!

Yeah, I assume he's just trolling.  The line about Calvin could surpass Conn if they win the title is as crazy as it gets.  Maybe Michel doesn't realize Calvin is 22-1-1 or 23-1-1 and has been to the Final Four multiple times since 2015 and is there yet again.

Spot on, and props to you for putting a troll in his rightful troll place.  I will say, maybe the crazier part of his statement is that Centre could be #3.  Not to take anything away from a tremendous Cinderella run to the Final Four, but at the end of the year, the rankings should reflect who we think would win on a neutral field any given day, and Centre just hasn't proven to be Top 3 caliber.  George Mason made the Final Four in '06 while Reddick's Duke were at home, but that didn't change the fact that Duke was still the better team.  One off tournament results might mean the best team is not there on the last day, but educated public is still well aware of who the best teams are. 

Honestly, pretty shocked that Michel is sitting at +0/-0 after coming in hot with 7 instigating, inflammatory posts.  If I had -k to give, I'd toss some his way.

[jknezek]

Honestly, pretty shocked that Michel is sitting at +0/-0 after coming in hot with 7 instigating, inflammatory posts.  If I had -k to give, I'd toss some his way.

Giving -k to a troll just gives them a point of pride. It's hardly worth it except as a warning to others not to engage.

[Buddham]

My observations about the players are factual and specific. You called out a player for "needing coaching" and being "a handful" while questioning his "attitude" (in that your imply his currently doesn't show a willingness to learn). 

My observation about your post: you have no facts. I asked you to clarify what you "meant". It was not clear b/c you didn't cite any specifics.

You've gone right up to the line of saying something akin to "he's got lots of athleticism but lacks brains and discipline". Which if you follow sports, you'll recognize as implicit racism many athletes of color have had to confront. I've tried to give you every opportunity to climb down, but feigning ignorance and saying you were "pretty clear what I meant" makes me conclude that your hood is showing.

Serpone has his hands full with #23. This kid has the athletic ability to be a star but he needs coaching like no player I have seen in a while in this league. The improvement / lack thereof of this kid might give some of us outsiders a real chance at seeing how good a Head Coach Serpone is. I will say it does matter the kids attitude..He has to be willing to learn and hopefully is open to it.

What do you mean by "attitude" and why does he need "coaching"? Please cite specifics.

I rhought I was pretty clear in what I meant. He has to be willing to learn and that it matters if his attitude is "open" to it. Some players are open to suggestion and others not so much. I was not in any way implying the kid has a bad attitude and why would I? I have never met him. I actually stated he has the potential to be a star but he needs some polish. Most Frosh need to "learn" the college game and some take longer than others. I feel like the overall product could be much better if he works on game....thats it...u obviously disagree and that is fine as well.

Nearly every first year player would benefit from "polish". Giammattei - did he arrive a finished product or has Serpone already submitted evidence of his coaching props? Doesn't everyone need the appropriate attitude to learn? The appropriate teacher?

I'm calling your post out b/c it's highly...provocative to call #23 out on scant evidence, and the evidence there is contradicts your supposition - he's won a starting position on a final four team and happened to score the winning goal in the game that you commented about.

Or maybe you meant to say, "He's got tremendous upside potential". Please refrain from commenting on his "grit".

Yes...well I dont think I ever commented on his grit..u have obviously bungled my point...u even start criticizing his own teammates actions on the field to make ur point..however I am willing to drop it if it helps...

[jknezek]

My observations about the players are factual and specific. You called out a player for "needing coaching" and being "a handful" while questioning his "attitude" (in that your imply his currently doesn't show a willingness to learn). 

My observation about your post: you have no facts. I asked you to clarify what you "meant". It was not clear b/c you didn't cite any specifics.

You've gone right up to the line of saying something akin to "he's got lots of athleticism but lacks brains and discipline". Which if you follow sports, you'll recognize as implicit racism many athletes of color have had to confront. I've tried to give you every opportunity to climb down, but feigning ignorance and saying you were "pretty clear what I meant" makes me conclude that your hood is showing.

9th post and accusing a long time poster of racism. That's impressive. Mr. Right and his previous name have been many things, not all of them well liked, but racist isn't a label I'd have thrown at him.

[Buck O.]

My observations about the players are factual and specific. You called out a player for "needing coaching" and being "a handful" while questioning his "attitude" (in that your imply his currently doesn't show a willingness to learn). 

My observation about your post: you have no facts. I asked you to clarify what you "meant". It was not clear b/c you didn't cite any specifics.

You've gone right up to the line of saying something akin to "he's got lots of athleticism but lacks brains and discipline". Which if you follow sports, you'll recognize as implicit racism many athletes of color have had to confront. I've tried to give you every opportunity to climb down, but feigning ignorance and saying you were "pretty clear what I meant" makes me conclude that your hood is showing.

9th post and accusing a long time poster of racism. That's impressive. Mr. Right and his previous name have been many things, not all of them well liked, but racist isn't a label I'd have thrown at him.

Wow, lots of stuff going on the board today.  I'll address this one first.

Buddham, your entire string of posts has been based on a poor reading of Mr Right's original post.  Read it again.  He said that the player could be very good but that it would depend on his attitude and openness to learning.  You chose to assume that Mr Right was asserting that the player had a bad attitude and wasn't open to learning, and you ignored his response which should have clarified things.  That says more about you than it does about Mr Right.

[Buck O.]

Tufts making the final does not make Conn the #3 team in the country. It makes tufts a top two team. Conn is not better than Calvin, Messiah, North park or a handful of other teams. You can't just say we lost to the best team so we're the next best team.

Conn College's loss to Tufts doesn't make them #3.  Their Ws and Ls this season does.  Their loss to Babson is definitely a blemish but otherwise, there resume is #3 in the nation. Currently.  If Centre or Calvin win, obviously, this will change. But, otherwise, they'll hold this #3 spot.

Conn is going to hold the #3 spot in your head but no where else on the planet.  Enjoy the delusion.

Actually, Conn is currently rated #4 by Massey, and might rise to #3 if Calvin loses to Tufts.  So there is a case to be made here, although the better way to make the case would have been to cite supporting evidence as I've done here.

[Buddham]

The original post: "Serpone has his hands full with #23. This kid has the athletic ability to be a star but he needs coaching like no player I have seen in a while in this league. The improvement / lack thereof of this kid might give some of us outsiders a real chance at seeing how good a Head Coach Serpone is. I will say it does matter the kids attitude..He has to be willing to learn and hopefully is open to it."

#23 started and scored the winner in the playoffs: he obviously has athletic ability, and has the apparent faith of his coach. What about his play that game, or this season, would make anyone say his coach has his hands full (which I may be misinterpreting, but that seems a negative comment). Why does this player need coaching so desperately according to the post?

What makes this kid a litmus test of the coach's ability more so than any other player?

Then to specify nothing other than his attitude with the elipsis to reference him being willing to learn, as if that doesn't apply to every player? Like I wrote, if the intent was to compliment, "he's got tremendous upside potential, hope his trajectory continues upward" wouldn't that have been much easier to communicate? Unless that wasn't the implication?

Yes, my tenth post, if we are counting. I sought further explanation because I'm too new to understand what Mr Right found so obvious (and if so, then pointing it out served what purpose?)

My observations about the players are factual and specific. You called out a player for "needing coaching" and being "a handful" while questioning his "attitude" (in that your imply his currently doesn't show a willingness to learn). 

My observation about your post: you have no facts. I asked you to clarify what you "meant". It was not clear b/c you didn't cite any specifics.

You've gone right up to the line of saying something akin to "he's got lots of athleticism but lacks brains and discipline". Which if you follow sports, you'll recognize as implicit racism many athletes of color have had to confront. I've tried to give you every opportunity to climb down, but feigning ignorance and saying you were "pretty clear what I meant" makes me conclude that your hood is showing.

9th post and accusing a long time poster of racism. That's impressive. Mr. Right and his previous name have been many things, not all of them well liked, but racist isn't a label I'd have thrown at him.

Wow, lots of stuff going on the board today.  I'll address this one first.

Buddham, your entire string of posts has been based on a poor reading of Mr Right's original post.  Read it again.  He said that the player could be very good but that it would depend on his attitude and openness to learning.  You chose to assume that Mr Right was asserting that the player had a bad attitude and wasn't open to learning, and you ignored his response which should have clarified things.  That says more about you than it does about Mr Right.

[Buck O.]

Who's better couldn't be more relevant. That's the whole point of the award. Those stats don't factor in the difficulty of saves, a goalies ability in the air, his kicking. If you polled Nescac coaches they would rather have Marcucci and that's why he's first team. Because if he's on your team, your team is now better.

So we are going with the eye test?  Here are Grady's stats.  If you rank first in 6 different categories, at some point the statistical body of evidence has to have some impact.  Or does Marcucci gets to be first team until he graduates just because he is Marcucci?  Marcucci had an unbelievable 2018, but his 2019 stats are nowhere near his 2018 ones, and not as good as Grady's. 


STATISTICS CATEGORY   OVERALL   CONF
Games played   20   1st   10   1st
Games started   19   1st   10   1st
Minutes   1828:40   1st   970:25   1st
Goals against   10   5th   7   4th
Goals-against average   0.49   1st   0.65   3rd
Saves   81   1st   50   1st
Save pct   .890   1st   .877   3rd
Wins   9   4th   3   6th
Losses   3   297th   2   275th
Ties   7   306th   4   283rd
Shutouts   9/2   1st   3/1   5th

And finally:  stats CAN be useful in evaluating players, but they don't have to be useful.  A keeper's win-loss record obviously sweeps in lots,of stuff that goes well beyond his individual performance.  Judging by the number of saves rewards keepers whose teams permit lots of SOGs.  Etc.

I have no doubt that EPL teams have access to lots of stats that would be very useful in assembling a comprehensive evaluation of who's the better keeper.  We don't have those stats, and I don't think that the stats we have available are much more useful than evaluating hitters using batting average and RBIs:  they tell you something, but they leave lots of stuff out.

[PaulNewman]

The original post: "Serpone has his hands full with #23. This kid has the athletic ability to be a star but he needs coaching like no player I have seen in a while in this league. The improvement / lack thereof of this kid might give some of us outsiders a real chance at seeing how good a Head Coach Serpone is. I will say it does matter the kids attitude..He has to be willing to learn and hopefully is open to it."

#23 started and scored the winner in the playoffs: he obviously has athletic ability, and has the apparent faith of his coach. What about his play that game, or this season, would make anyone say his coach has his hands full (which I may be misinterpreting, but that seems a negative comment). Why does this player need coaching so desperately according to the post?

What makes this kid a litmus test of the coach's ability more so than any other player?

Then to specify nothing other than his attitude with the elipsis to reference him being willing to learn, as if that doesn't apply to every player? Like I wrote, if the intent was to compliment, "he's got tremendous upside potential, hope his trajectory continues upward" wouldn't that have been much easier to communicate? Unless that wasn't the implication?

Yes, my tenth post, if we are counting. I sought further explanation because I'm too new to understand what Mr Right found so obvious (and if so, then pointing it out served what purpose?)

My observations about the players are factual and specific. You called out a player for "needing coaching" and being "a handful" while questioning his "attitude" (in that your imply his currently doesn't show a willingness to learn). 

My observation about your post: you have no facts. I asked you to clarify what you "meant". It was not clear b/c you didn't cite any specifics.

You've gone right up to the line of saying something akin to "he's got lots of athleticism but lacks brains and discipline". Which if you follow sports, you'll recognize as implicit racism many athletes of color have had to confront. I've tried to give you every opportunity to climb down, but feigning ignorance and saying you were "pretty clear what I meant" makes me conclude that your hood is showing.

9th post and accusing a long time poster of racism. That's impressive. Mr. Right and his previous name have been many things, not all of them well liked, but racist isn't a label I'd have thrown at him.

Wow, lots of stuff going on the board today.  I'll address this one first.

Buddham, your entire string of posts has been based on a poor reading of Mr Right's original post.  Read it again.  He said that the player could be very good but that it would depend on his attitude and openness to learning.  You chose to assume that Mr Right was asserting that the player had a bad attitude and wasn't open to learning, and you ignored his response which should have clarified things.  That says more about you than it does about Mr Right.

Buddham, you've made your point.  We all got what you were alleging from your very first post.  The insistence on extracting some type of confession, and then escalating to talking about a 'hood' are a little much.  Mr.Right has celebrated programs with diversity and players of color.  He has praised individual players of color many, many times.  He's taken the other side when some of us have criticized NJAC style/behavior.  He knows the player goes to Amherst (i.e. he knows the kid is smart).  You could have asked for him to elaborate on what he meant without already deciding what he meant with the intent to force him to admit what you concluded.

[hiyasoccer]

So as a former NESCAC keeper who does data analysis professionally, you may be shocked to hear I have something to say. I apologize because it will not be brief - you hit a couple of my big trigger points in a big way, and I tried to resist a rant but failed. Ah well.

First things first, I'll make it clear I have no horse in the Marcucci v. Grady debate. No idea which is better. Honestly couldn't care less. Also agree with the other former GK posting that the individual awards are good as food for thought, but get farrrrr more attention on these boards than from the players.

Second thing, this is going to come off harsh towards the people that were using statistics to promote a point of view. On one hand I kind of feel bad about that, because it's a very common mistake to make these days, with sports being one of the more common places to make - if you want to see an example, just turn on ESPN for like 5 minutes. On the other hand, I don't really feel bad, because they came in very assertively with bad opinions.

The question I'm going to address is this: Do the statistics listed below and in previous posts provide a good basis for evaluating and comparing soccer goalkeeper performance? Statistics record outcomes, and in general, we want to know if those outcomes are good measures of the performances we're trying to evaluate. I will first try to address this question at the highest level, independent of any particular context, but may in parts go into more detail on the situation at hand.

Wins - Okay think about this one for like maybe 10 seconds. One goalie has 5 wins and 5 losses. Another goalie has 4 wins and 6 ties. Why the hell would you pick "Wins" as a statistic? Even amongst bad options, this is a bad choice. A better choice would be record, which I'll put forward a more reasonable argument against. My guess is the poster has a background playing or following hockey, where "Win" is a standard goalie statistic (though note that it's basically just as dumb a statistic for judging goalie performance in hockey).

Record - Okay think about this one for like 10 seconds. What determines a teams record? How good the team is. Is the goalie a part of that? Sure. A bigger part than any other individual player? Arguably. Still a small part of a collective team? Definitely. Saying one goalie had a better season than the other because they had a better record than the other is CRAZY because they contributed such a small part to that record - mostly, it's how well did their team play. Side note: If thinking about individual player contributions to record interests you, check out the WAR (Wins-above-replacement) stat in baseball, which addresses exactly this. It's not new but is still somehow not that mainstream.

GAA - Okay think about this one for like 10 seconds... yeah we're finally moving in the right direction here. This is at least a defensive-specific stat. How many goals does a team give up a game - this is a clearly influenced in good part by a goalkeeper's performance. Problem is, it's also influenced in just as good part by the team's defense, and you don't know how to attribute it. To use a cartoonish example, this past season David De Gea had played for Trinity, who lost all 10 of their NESCAC games scoring 4 goals while conceding 35. Now I bet you David De Gea would play just fanastic for trinity, but is he gonna turn 35 into 7 (the number of goals allowed in NESCAC play by both Conn and Midd)? Seems unlikely. Say he cuts that 35 down to 13. He's David freakin De Gea and clearly the best GK in the NESCAC, but he has a worse GAA because his defense is garbagio. So unfortunately, this stastic is also basically useless in a general sense. But a point on the situation at hand - when you use GAA, you assume all games are equal. However, one you leave the sample of "conference league play" both keepers/teams have played a different sample of games against a fairly different set of opponents, and the sample size is already small. Also note that Middlebury, Grady's team, used to be notorious for playing a weak out of conference regular season schedule, which would make this stat look good for him. If you simply look at GAA in NESCAC league play, Marcucci's 0.5 is superior to Grady's 0.7 (though again, both stat's are poor for evaluating goalkeepers). And probably better to look at would be minutes per goal which accounts for overtimes, where Marcucci comes in at 91:30 while Grady at 97:02 (side note: I was going to say this math seemed odd until i realized middlebury has 5 ties lol that's insane).

Shutouts - Okay think about this one for like 5 seconds... shouldn't need longer than that after the above rant. This is a dumb stat for evaluating performance. It's so bad I honestly can't come up with any argument for why you would use it to summarily refute. I will come back to this one if I need to lol.

Saves - Okay think about this one for 10 seconds lol... we finally got a goalie statistic! This is something an actual goalie does!  - saves are actually mostly a function of number of minutes played and average number of SOG allowed by the defense per minute. So we should errr probably do the reasonable thing and normalize these to be on a per game basis And at the division 3 college level, what the scorekeeper deem counts as a shot, and how good friends they are with the goalkeeper . In the example at hand, Grady has 81 saves on the season while playing 1830 minutes. Marcucci has 67 saves on the season while playing 1700 minutes. So we should probably normalize these to be on a per game basis.

Saves/game - Oookay we're getting close. What's the main determining factor in saves per game? Here's a hint: I already mentioned it. That's right: SOG allowed by the defense per game (or per minute - generally the same normalization factor). Most GK's are making like 2-6 saves a same, and save percent in varying like, not more than 20% bottom to top. So at most, whether a goalie actually saves a shot has is affecting this number by an absolute cartoonish maximum of 1 save per game, but very like much less than that. The rest of the number is determined by the SOG allowed by the defense per game. As it turns out, among GK's playing a decent number of games, Webber from Bowdoin is the easy leader in saves per game with 5.09, followed by Devanny from Wes at 4.73... not that it matters, because like I said, this is a trash statistic for evaluating goalkeeper performance.

Save % - okay, think about this one for like 20 seconds....................... holy moley we made it. If you forget about all the other things goalkeepers do... sweeper keeping, distribution, dealing with crosses (so important in the NESCAC), communication, etc. and just focus on what people consider the main part of goalkeeping, that would be "shotstopping". You can think about each shot as a sample and each keeper's ability/performance as their percentage at stopping those shots. This is actually a great measure in the super abstract sense, until you have to deal with reality, and realize your data may or may not be so informative depending on the case. For starters, to measure performance you need a sampling of data on shots on which keepers attempt to make saves on. Unfortunately your only option is the shots they face during game, which begs the following questions - is the set of shots a keeper faces over the course of a season a good sample over which to measure this statistic, meaning: Will the sample tend to have inherent biases in it that we need to account for? Is it large enough to give us a number with a reasonable degree of certainty? These are questions that need to be answered in a particular context before you can use save percentage confidently as a measure of goalkeeper performance. I'll through some ideas out - (1) consider that different teams play different styles, and different styles tend to allow to different types of chances generated by the opposition on a consistent basis - therefore giving you different, and biased samples across keepers. For example, many good defensive teams (examples include Leceister and Bowdoin or Colby usually) excel at playing "bend but don't break" defense, where they'll allow for generation of long-shot scoring chances and half chances, but few real scoring chances. (Note that when these teams get good goalies, they're always dangerous come tournament time). This allows goalkeepers to have a better-than-they-would-with-a-random sample save percentage. Going the other way, some teams may play with a high pressing or attacking style, and allow less to get through to their goalkeeper, but what does get through is more often a good chance. (2) In the context given, the sample of opponents faced is different outside of the confines of in-NESCAC play once again, and this is again a dangerous thing to smooth over... some offensive teams will take more low quality shots. Some time fewer high quality. Some are in between. (3) Also consider sample size problems when deciding how precise of a measure on shot stopping ability you're getting. Looking at a premier league keeper, David De Gea made 122 saves on 176 shots the entire premier league season last year, for a a SV% of 0.69. Think about how few outliers you need to make that number look off. 18 additional saves over the course of the season (1 every other game) would bump his SV % up to about 0.72%. Alternatively, he could have given up 5 less goals in the 38 game season, which is a pretty small difference. That's less than one fewer goal given up every 7 games... easily within the bounds of random happenstance, or goals scored on plays he could do absolutely nothing about... I can guarantee you more than 10 of the goals he gave up he couldn't have stopped if he were 3 inches taller. A lot of goals in soccer are scored on plays were the keeper just has to sigh and scratch his head. It's not hockey where the keeper takes up the entire net and could theoretically save everything.

Let's now take the case at hand, which has an even more hilariously small sample size. Marcucci made 67 saves on 78 shots this year for a SV% of 0.859 in all games. Grady 81 saves on 91 shots for a SV% of 0.890. Wait hold on a second - Marcucci and Conn just suffered a tough loss to Tufts in which Marcucci allowed 3 goals, 2 of which the aforementioned David De Gea could do nothing about. He also made 5 saves. Subtract that game from the statistics. Marcucci now has 62 saves on 70 shots, giving him a SV% of 0.886. His numbers got worse mostly because his Conn team got beat by a better Tufts team (though he didn't help himself by missing that cross). Anyways, this makes my point about both the non-comparable schedules (not totally relevant because IIRC Midd actually played Tufts in NESCAC finals, but you see what I'm getting at) and also how little precision you're getting from these numbers with so small of a sample size. The difference between the 2 keeper's SV% numbers over the entire season, 20 games, is essentially 3 goals, which could happen in a single game and be totally out of the keeper's control, or be a single goal every 7 games that happens totally out of a keepers control. Or it could have randomly happened that the teams one keeper played were hotter and playing better than the teams the other keeper played and the strikers placed the ball better. In a large enough sample, it would even out, but this isn't a large sample. You're well within your error +/-. Essentially, what I'm saying is that at the level of precision of these statistics (espeically factoring in the fact that the scorekeeping was done at a d3 level lol) these numbers are identical. It's like asking if 1.0000000000001 is the same number as 1 - technically no, but basically yeah they're the same. When trying to understanding data, is just as important to recognize when a number is telling you nothing as opposed to when it's telling you something.

For the other examples... I didn't actually look at what was being talked about, but don't just throw around SV%... look at see if it's actually looking at comparable samples, and if the difference between the keepers being compared seems like a significant one over the course of a season. I'm betting in general at this level it won't be, and in any case as you can tell I'm skeptical of the scorekeeping of shots and saves in the first place lol. And of course, there's no getting around the defensive styles thing or the fact that save percentages even in the pros are just a small sample.

Okay, this is the end of my ridiculously long and probably unnecessary rant about goalkeeper statistics. Once again, I'm sorry. Now that I've bashed statistics as a way of evaluating goalkeepers, I will put forward these ideas for evaluating them:
1) Use your eyes. Statistics measure outcomes only and as such are necessarily information-lossy simplifications of reality. They are a tool that can be helpful to understand the world and things in it, but don't through them around blindly. Your eyes work and can understand reality at the level it operates at, and understand why things happen, e.g. "he made a good dive and saved the ball" or "no keeper would have saved that one" or "he's keeping his team in the game".
2) Get a large enough sample size. Lots of games, goalies don't get much action. I've actually seen Marcucci play like 3 games but I still don't have a strong opinion on him because he had all that much to do in most of the games.
3) Actually, if you're not a goalkeeper yourself, don't use your own eyes. Borrow the eyes of a friend that's a trained goalkeeper. I've watched too many soccer games with field player friends, and I love them all, but they simply don't know enough to evaluate goalies well. Particularly positioning. A good goalkeeper won't have to make many great-looking saves because they'll be well positioned to make comfortable ones.

[NEsoccerfan]

@hiyasoccer - This is a FANTASTIC, informative post, that neither you nor any other reader/poster should consider a rant. I've played this great game for the last 26 years (including in college) and you raise many points I NEVER concretely considered. +1 and if I could give you more, I would.

[blooter442]

Co-signed NEsoccerfan — that is extremely logical and well-written. Personally, I recently changed from a more conventional marketing background to working in (marketing) analytics and one of my major learnings has been that — while the amount of statistical information we have available today is incredible and can be useful — not all seemingly-relevant statistics are as useful as we might think for a given situation. Certainly statistics can and do provide a quantitative perspective that conjecture does not, but context is equally important, and so the context provided here was extremely helpful in terms of evaluating which statistics (which are kept for all goalkeepers) are relevant and how much they should be weighted.

[Mr.Right]

So as a former NESCAC keeper who does data analysis professionally, you may be shocked to hear I have something to say. I apologize because it will not be brief - you hit a couple of my big trigger points in a big way, and I tried to resist a rant but failed. Ah well.

First things first, I'll make it clear I have no horse in the Marcucci v. Grady debate. No idea which is better. Honestly couldn't care less. Also agree with the other former GK posting that the individual awards are good as food for thought, but get farrrrr more attention on these boards than from the players.

Second thing, this is going to come off harsh towards the people that were using statistics to promote a point of view. On one hand I kind of feel bad about that, because it's a very common mistake to make these days, with sports being one of the more common places to make - if you want to see an example, just turn on ESPN for like 5 minutes. On the other hand, I don't really feel bad, because they came in very assertively with bad opinions.

The question I'm going to address is this: Do the statistics listed below and in previous posts provide a good basis for evaluating and comparing soccer goalkeeper performance? Statistics record outcomes, and in general, we want to know if those outcomes are good measures of the performances we're trying to evaluate. I will first try to address this question at the highest level, independent of any particular context, but may in parts go into more detail on the situation at hand.

Wins - Okay think about this one for like maybe 10 seconds. One goalie has 5 wins and 5 losses. Another goalie has 4 wins and 6 ties. Why the hell would you pick "Wins" as a statistic? Even amongst bad options, this is a bad choice. A better choice would be record, which I'll put forward a more reasonable argument against. My guess is the poster has a background playing or following hockey, where "Win" is a standard goalie statistic (though note that it's basically just as dumb a statistic for judging goalie performance in hockey).

Record - Okay think about this one for like 10 seconds. What determines a teams record? How good the team is. Is the goalie a part of that? Sure. A bigger part than any other individual player? Arguably. Still a small part of a collective team? Definitely. Saying one goalie had a better season than the other because they had a better record than the other is CRAZY because they contributed such a small part to that record - mostly, it's how well did their team play. Side note: If thinking about individual player contributions to record interests you, check out the WAR (Wins-above-replacement) stat in baseball, which addresses exactly this. It's not new but is still somehow not that mainstream.

GAA - Okay think about this one for like 10 seconds... yeah we're finally moving in the right direction here. This is at least a defensive-specific stat. How many goals does a team give up a game - this is a clearly influenced in good part by a goalkeeper's performance. Problem is, it's also influenced in just as good part by the team's defense, and you don't know how to attribute it. To use a cartoonish example, this past season David De Gea had played for Trinity, who lost all 10 of their NESCAC games scoring 4 goals while conceding 35. Now I bet you David De Gea would play just fanastic for trinity, but is he gonna turn 35 into 7 (the number of goals allowed in NESCAC play by both Conn and Midd)? Seems unlikely. Say he cuts that 35 down to 13. He's David freakin De Gea and clearly the best GK in the NESCAC, but he has a worse GAA because his defense is garbagio. So unfortunately, this stastic is also basically useless in a general sense. But a point on the situation at hand - when you use GAA, you assume all games are equal. However, one you leave the sample of "conference league play" both keepers/teams have played a different sample of games against a fairly different set of opponents, and the sample size is already small. Also note that Middlebury, Grady's team, used to be notorious for playing a weak out of conference regular season schedule, which would make this stat look good for him. If you simply look at GAA in NESCAC league play, Marcucci's 0.5 is superior to Grady's 0.7 (though again, both stat's are poor for evaluating goalkeepers). And probably better to look at would be minutes per goal which accounts for overtimes, where Marcucci comes in at 91:30 while Grady at 97:02 (side note: I was going to say this math seemed odd until i realized middlebury has 5 ties lol that's insane).

Shutouts - Okay think about this one for like 5 seconds... shouldn't need longer than that after the above rant. This is a dumb stat for evaluating performance. It's so bad I honestly can't come up with any argument for why you would use it to summarily refute. I will come back to this one if I need to lol.

Saves - Okay think about this one for 10 seconds lol... we finally got a goalie statistic! This is something an actual goalie does!  - saves are actually mostly a function of number of minutes played and average number of SOG allowed by the defense per minute. So we should errr probably do the reasonable thing and normalize these to be on a per game basis And at the division 3 college level, what the scorekeeper deem counts as a shot, and how good friends they are with the goalkeeper . In the example at hand, Grady has 81 saves on the season while playing 1830 minutes. Marcucci has 67 saves on the season while playing 1700 minutes. So we should probably normalize these to be on a per game basis.

Saves/game - Oookay we're getting close. What's the main determining factor in saves per game? Here's a hint: I already mentioned it. That's right: SOG allowed by the defense per game (or per minute - generally the same normalization factor). Most GK's are making like 2-6 saves a same, and save percent in varying like, not more than 20% bottom to top. So at most, whether a goalie actually saves a shot has is affecting this number by an absolute cartoonish maximum of 1 save per game, but very like much less than that. The rest of the number is determined by the SOG allowed by the defense per game. As it turns out, among GK's playing a decent number of games, Webber from Bowdoin is the easy leader in saves per game with 5.09, followed by Devanny from Wes at 4.73... not that it matters, because like I said, this is a trash statistic for evaluating goalkeeper performance.

Save % - okay, think about this one for like 20 seconds....................... holy moley we made it. If you forget about all the other things goalkeepers do... sweeper keeping, distribution, dealing with crosses (so important in the NESCAC), communication, etc. and just focus on what people consider the main part of goalkeeping, that would be "shotstopping". You can think about each shot as a sample and each keeper's ability/performance as their percentage at stopping those shots. This is actually a great measure in the super abstract sense, until you have to deal with reality, and realize your data may or may not be so informative depending on the case. For starters, to measure performance you need a sampling of data on shots on which keepers attempt to make saves on. Unfortunately your only option is the shots they face during game, which begs the following questions - is the set of shots a keeper faces over the course of a season a good sample over which to measure this statistic, meaning: Will the sample tend to have inherent biases in it that we need to account for? Is it large enough to give us a number with a reasonable degree of certainty? These are questions that need to be answered in a particular context before you can use save percentage confidently as a measure of goalkeeper performance. I'll through some ideas out - (1) consider that different teams play different styles, and different styles tend to allow to different types of chances generated by the opposition on a consistent basis - therefore giving you different, and biased samples across keepers. For example, many good defensive teams (examples include Leceister and Bowdoin or Colby usually) excel at playing "bend but don't break" defense, where they'll allow for generation of long-shot scoring chances and half chances, but few real scoring chances. (Note that when these teams get good goalies, they're always dangerous come tournament time). This allows goalkeepers to have a better-than-they-would-with-a-random sample save percentage. Going the other way, some teams may play with a high pressing or attacking style, and allow less to get through to their goalkeeper, but what does get through is more often a good chance. (2) In the context given, the sample of opponents faced is different outside of the confines of in-NESCAC play once again, and this is again a dangerous thing to smooth over... some offensive teams will take more low quality shots. Some time fewer high quality. Some are in between. (3) Also consider sample size problems when deciding how precise of a measure on shot stopping ability you're getting. Looking at a premier league keeper, David De Gea made 122 saves on 176 shots the entire premier league season last year, for a a SV% of 0.69. Think about how few outliers you need to make that number look off. 18 additional saves over the course of the season (1 every other game) would bump his SV % up to about 0.72%. Alternatively, he could have given up 5 less goals in the 38 game season, which is a pretty small difference. That's less than one fewer goal given up every 7 games... easily within the bounds of random happenstance, or goals scored on plays he could do absolutely nothing about... I can guarantee you more than 10 of the goals he gave up he couldn't have stopped if he were 3 inches taller. A lot of goals in soccer are scored on plays were the keeper just has to sigh and scratch his head. It's not hockey where the keeper takes up the entire net and could theoretically save everything.

Let's now take the case at hand, which has an even more hilariously small sample size. Marcucci made 67 saves on 78 shots this year for a SV% of 0.859 in all games. Grady 81 saves on 91 shots for a SV% of 0.890. Wait hold on a second - Marcucci and Conn just suffered a tough loss to Tufts in which Marcucci allowed 3 goals, 2 of which the aforementioned David De Gea could do nothing about. He also made 5 saves. Subtract that game from the statistics. Marcucci now has 62 saves on 70 shots, giving him a SV% of 0.886. His numbers got worse mostly because his Conn team got beat by a better Tufts team (though he didn't help himself by missing that cross). Anyways, this makes my point about both the non-comparable schedules (not totally relevant because IIRC Midd actually played Tufts in NESCAC finals, but you see what I'm getting at) and also how little precision you're getting from these numbers with so small of a sample size. The difference between the 2 keeper's SV% numbers over the entire season, 20 games, is essentially 3 goals, which could happen in a single game and be totally out of the keeper's control, or be a single goal every 7 games that happens totally out of a keepers control. Or it could have randomly happened that the teams one keeper played were hotter and playing better than the teams the other keeper played and the strikers placed the ball better. In a large enough sample, it would even out, but this isn't a large sample. You're well within your error +/-. Essentially, what I'm saying is that at the level of precision of these statistics (espeically factoring in the fact that the scorekeeping was done at a d3 level lol) these numbers are identical. It's like asking if 1.0000000000001 is the same number as 1 - technically no, but basically yeah they're the same. When trying to understanding data, is just as important to recognize when a number is telling you nothing as opposed to when it's telling you something.

For the other examples... I didn't actually look at what was being talked about, but don't just throw around SV%... look at see if it's actually looking at comparable samples, and if the difference between the keepers being compared seems like a significant one over the course of a season. I'm betting in general at this level it won't be, and in any case as you can tell I'm skeptical of the scorekeeping of shots and saves in the first place lol. And of course, there's no getting around the defensive styles thing or the fact that save percentages even in the pros are just a small sample.

Okay, this is the end of my ridiculously long and probably unnecessary rant about goalkeeper statistics. Once again, I'm sorry. Now that I've bashed statistics as a way of evaluating goalkeepers, I will put forward these ideas for evaluating them:
1) Use your eyes. Statistics measure outcomes only and as such are necessarily information-lossy simplifications of reality. They are a tool that can be helpful to understand the world and things in it, but don't through them around blindly. Your eyes work and can understand reality at the level it operates at, and understand why things happen, e.g. "he made a good dive and saved the ball" or "no keeper would have saved that one" or "he's keeping his team in the game".
2) Get a large enough sample size. Lots of games, goalies don't get much action. I've actually seen Marcucci play like 3 games but I still don't have a strong opinion on him because he had all that much to do in most of the games.
3) Actually, if you're not a goalkeeper yourself, don't use your own eyes. Borrow the eyes of a friend that's a trained goalkeeper. I've watched too many soccer games with field player friends, and I love them all, but they simply don't know enough to evaluate goalies well. Particularly positioning. A good goalkeeper won't have to make many great-looking saves because they'll be well positioned to make comfortable ones.

Well done...What I highlighted is what I consider to be your most important opinion. I ALWAYS defer to former GK when I start to question my own judgement on GK's. I will cede I have tons to learn still about GK's. This is what I find most interesting about present day Nescac. Half of the league's Head Coaches are former GK's which IMO is pretty rare in any league.

[Mr.Right]

My observations about the players are factual and specific. You called out a player for "needing coaching" and being "a handful" while questioning his "attitude" (in that your imply his currently doesn't show a willingness to learn). 

My observation about your post: you have no facts. I asked you to clarify what you "meant". It was not clear b/c you didn't cite any specifics.

You've gone right up to the line of saying something akin to "he's got lots of athleticism but lacks brains and discipline". Which if you follow sports, you'll recognize as implicit racism many athletes of color have had to confront. I've tried to give you every opportunity to climb down, but feigning ignorance and saying you were "pretty clear what I meant" makes me conclude that your hood is showing.

9th post and accusing a long time poster of racism. That's impressive. Mr. Right and his previous name have been many things, not all of them well liked, but racist isn't a label I'd have thrown at him.

Ha....Yes.....On my last Dead tour in 95' that damn hood always was a poor ice breaker in the lot. Thank you for the support on this specific issue from some of you. I am willing to learn how this white guy(me), can proclaim the great athleticism of some black athletes without stirring the lions den because in all seriousness I am not here to offend people. I can at the minimum promise to be more careful before I post and try to present more detailed analysis(which I try to avoid sometimes and for good reason as we can see here). At the below bare minimum I will refrain from from any bomb throwing in here.