When looking at the number of matches wrestled (and not time elapsed since the start of practice), we're slightly over the halfway point of the season. To illustrate, Ira and Rin are pretty representative with 10 and 11 respective matches under their belts while Ricky and Shawn represent the upper end at 14 matches a piece. We can figure around 8-10 matches remain in the season between the Kinnick dual meet, Kanto Finals, and Far East. So, how are we doing halfway through the season? Before getting into the meat of the analysis, let's remember that stats do not win or lose matches, may not pertain to a certain match's particular opponent, and are a lagging indicator. They can, however, paint a broad picture of areas of success or areas that need improvement, especially when compared with opponents' numbers or previous years' numbers. The first stat we'll look as is the takedown-to-exposure ratio. This shows how many times a wrestler exposes the back of their opponent for every takedown they score. A typical good example would be a takedown followed by an exposure (that doesn't lead to a pin) followed by another exposure (that ends the match in a pin). A typical bad example would be a takedown that leads to no exposures. Using this stat we can determine if we need to work on turns and leg laces - both scoring more (offense) and preventing better (defense). | td-2 | e-2 | scored | 1 | 0.88 | allowd | 1 | 0.48 | This is a great improvement over last season; we're scoring 0.88 exposures for every 2-point takedown we score (vs 0.52 last year), and our opponents needs to take us down more than 2 times to get an exposure (allowed 0.57 last year). It feels to me like we get laced too much and we miss a lot of opportunities to go straight from a takedown to a leg lace, but the raw numbers (355 td-2s, 186 e-2s scored; 231 td-2s, 131 e-2s allowed) confirm that we're actually doing pretty well in this area. It's good to have a better ratio of td:e scored than allowed. In my December stat review, I listed 4-point takedowns as a point of potential concern. How are we doing now? 4-pt tds SCORED: 43, ALLOWED: 21 This has not developed into the problem I had worried about. We get almost exactly twice as much as we give in these big moves. That said, 3 of the top 4 most-pinned wrestlers are also the top 3 in 4-pt moves allowed. The link is clear...on defense. Interestingly, on offense, the leaders in 4-pt moves scored are not the leaders in pins scored; they tend to tech their opponents. Let's skip push-outs (19 scored to 16 allowed - no overarching story here) and look at a troubling trend: 2-pt reversals. Coming from the bottom to the top/controlling position gives you 2 points if you put them on their back when doing so. We have given up 10 of these and only scored 2. This is not just noise in the numbers; we're not as good at rolling through throws and such, and our opponents are better at reversing us to our backs when we're on top. Points per minute: this stat has proven to be less useful than I had hoped (but it does get the most space in this analysis...go figure). I was hoping to back up the old adage that aggressive, offensive-minded wrestling produces more wins, but it turns out that any one match that goes the full 6 minutes skews the rest of the numbers.
What I did find, however, was that every wrestler with a higher ppm scored than allowed has a winning record in matches wrestled - one bad match against a tough foe doesn't affect the overall trend. Another find was the opposite of what I expected: the magic number for ppm allowed appears to be 1.1. The wrestlers who have allowed about 3 points per period or less have a combined .857 winning percentage, with the lowest being .643. This indicates that these wrestlers tech or pin their opponents quickly/before they can be scored on much or wrestle tough kids the whole 6 minutes without giving up more than that many points (and typically scoring more than 6 themselves). Mustangs who allow 2.0 ppm or more are not doomed, but they must score a lot to overcome giving up an extrapolated 12 points or more in a full match. These wrestlers have a combined .500 record. Keeping track of each match's time has been interesting. For example, Rin has an 11-0 record in a total of 12.8 minutes of wrestling. Having scored a team-leading (by far) 106 points in that amount of wrestling gives him a ppm of 8.3. In a world without tech falls or pins to end matches early, he would score 50 points per match. That's just crazy! Liam (11-1) holds to the maxim with a 6.2 ppm scored, but Bryce (11-1) shows that truisms are not always true with his 2.0 ppm scored. Remember that the common thread among these wrestlers is ppm allowed - all are under 1.1. One last item of note is the makeup of our wins and losses. Do we pin more, lose by decision more, etc.? I've eliminated forfeit wins to just focus on matches wrestled. Our win ratio (pins:techs:decisions) is currently 48:45:7, meaning we pin about as much as we tech, with a few decision wins sprinkled in. Our loss ratio (pins:techs:decisions) stands at 55:31:14, showing that we get pinned at a higher rate than we get tech'ed. This is related to the r-2 allowed stat discussed above; we have trouble getting off our backs. (I don't think there's anything to be said about the decisions - we've won 6 and lost 7 in raw numbers, but we've won a lot more than we've lost overall, so it looks higher in the losses ratio.) These next few weeks will determine the regular season and tournament conference champion and the Far East champion, so hopefully these stats can help some wrestlers work on a few areas they may not have thought about very much in order to pull off some good wins that would otherwise go the other way.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
PhilSend me a note at [email protected] if you have ideas for a story or corrections/additions to these write-ups. Archives
March 2020
Categories |