Confused

[I'm back baby!!!]

Ok im not one to question stats often but this one i really have to question. According to Lewis and Clark Cuevas allowed 23 goals and still had 36 saves. If you do the math, then in a sixty minute game that means Western Washington was getting a shot on cage every minute. This doesn't include shots that missed cage or hit pipe or were eaten up by defenders. I dont know maybe WWU didnt miss a single shot and Lewis and Clark got no possesion time at all but it just doesn't add up.

[Blake]

Save stats are always questionable. Stat keepers are not usually all that well schooled on what constitutes a save.

[playlax]

I dont think LC did a good job with their stat keeping. I know they had a whole bunch of stuff messed up on WWU's side. there should be training/regulagtions on who can take the stats.

[TheBearcatHimself]

Agreeing with what Blake said yes save stats are in many cases questionable....However, in teams with weaker defenses like Lewis and Clark and my own team in the last few years, we have had games where teams have taken upwards of 70 or 80 shots. I believe WWU recorded by their own stat keeper that they took 70 shots when we played them last year. We lost 22-0 and I believe our keeper made around 30-32 saves. So I would definitely not be feeling that it is entirely out of the realm of possibility that a keeper for Lewis and Clark, especially Rafi who has been one of the best and most underrated keepers in the league over the last two seasons, could make 36 saves in a game against WWU or any team for that matter.

On another note in our WU game at Pacific, UOP's statistician recorded themselves that our keeper made 40+ saves. I talked it over with our keeper and he said he even felt that number was too high, we settled on 36 as a number, based on his estimates and some of the parents simple unscientific counts they had on the sideline (he probably made somewhere between 36-40). So yes, it is VERY possible for a keeper, especially one on a team with a weaker defense, to make that many saves in a game.

[Kyle Berggren]

Alright, I'm going to give you the other side of this argument... We keep stats terribly out here... TERRIBLY!!!!

More than 30 saves occurs entirely too often out here... It's should be a rarity... 70 shots is more than 1 a minute... it happens, but not all too often... When it does, a save could mean no rebound, so a shot a minute seems more ridiculous.

In my years, it's easy to notice that in blowouts, more assists are made. You're having fun, working as a team, & moving well off ball. In tighter games, typically fewer assists are recorded. However, somehow, we have teams assisting 80% of all their goals?.?.?.? An assist occurs when a player receives a pass & doesn't evade a player other than the goalie, then scores. It happens more often when a second slide doesn't occur, or during EMO opportunities. I even pointed out to my team how few of our goals were assisted this past weekend over the weekend before... To assist 11 of 16 of our goals 1 day, & 7 of 16 the next was one of the most impressive weekends of team play I have been a part of.

When we post something like that, we're aware that it's going to bring skepticism. I hope you guys are doing the same. Sure it happens once in a while, we get assists, but to assist a minimum of 75% of all of your teams goals is atrocious & invites skepticism of both your team & your conference. For instance, we don't always keep track of our shots, however, in more than 1 game I've coached (not necessarily this season, but it happens every season), the opposing team records more saves than we have total shots... This is why we rely on voting for all-conference, we don't use the stats posted by what appears to be players.

[I'm back baby!!!]

i agree completely Kyle. for this reason our team has started filming all of our games so that we can go back and double check our stats. On our original stat sheet for central, our stat guys had one player with one goal and three assists, but when we reviewed the tapes it turned out that he only had one assist and the goal. I know most teams cannot afford to make this happen, we got lucky with a volunteer, but if you can it brings a little more honesty and validation to what the score sheet says. In note of that comment about close games having less assists it depends on how that game becomes close. In our game against Central we blew a big lead but in scoring those first twelve goals we had a lot of assists. It's all due to circumstance. Also WOU's goaly, Mr. Blair has on numerous occasions come to us and made us lower his save numbers because the stat keepers were wrong, i myself have told the team to take away assists because i might have passed to the person who scored but he ran through a guy for the goal. We all need to take it upon ourselves to make sure the numbers are correct so that the right people are getting the accolades they deserve. I mean sure i want all conference, but i want it because every point i got was legit. not fabricated.

[TheBearcatHimself]

The last two posts were very true and to the point of poor stat keeping, both keeper saves and assists which are often fabricated, but I still think it is not a stretch of the imagination for Rafi Cuevas to have 36 saves in a game against WWU. He probably get shelled, in fact at 23-1 he DID get shelled. I don't like this questioning of a goalie that has proven his credentials over the last 2 seasons and has saved probably 10 shots of my own that I thought would have been goals on other goalies.

Again, when WU played WWU last year WWU themselves reported 70 shots on the MCLA website, go check it out ourself here: http://mcla.us/game.cfm?conferenceid=7& ... gameid=999
Now our goalie only recorded 29 saves that game, that means 19 shots missed net or hit the post or were deflected. That sounds very legitimate to me, I don't see the disconnect and I would even go so far as to say Rafi is a better goalie than our goalie last year (no disrespect Ross ).

Assist fabrication is something I offer no explanation for though other than the fact that my own d-poles were saying they had assists and I had to sit them down and explain the guy you passed to ran 50 yards then shot the ball.....

[TheNino57]

Stats kept in this league shouldn only be taken at face value. I like that these forums include comments concerning stats every year- because everyone needs to be reminded that stats in this league are often recorded by volunteers- friends of players on the home team and most don't understand the game at all. We appreciate these individuals volunteering their time but they have so much on their plate- stat sheets, horn, game clock, penalty clock, players, refs, and coaches yelling for time updates in real-time. When you have only two people handling all of these roles, it should be very understandable that they might, from time to time, make a mistake.

[Kyle Berggren]

It would be nice if it's volunteers, lets be honest, the majority of the time its players entering the stats... for themselves...

As far as a D-pole getting an assist.... If he hits a streaking attackmen, who runs straight to cage, evading no one, it's an assist... Our Goalie has an assist in this light. There's no 3 step rule, it simply has to do with evading another player.

I could care less about folks trying to defend their stats, I've seen these teams play, they know who they are, we know who they are. All-Conference selections aren't made based on stats alone. This doesn't need a huge discussion, we can do a search to see the same thread for the last few years. I'm hoping this is a final plea to these teams, you're not impressing anyone... Recording 100 saves won't make you a better keeper than Noah Symington (sp) or Nate Cordova (you have to earn it), & recording 40 assists in a weekend doesn't mean anything other than you're padding your stats.... Some of us are new to the game, but many of us are not... I thought of myself as a pretty good feeder on a pretty good team at the time, & I never recorded more than 7 assists in a game (people drop balls miss the cage & typically don't shoot 80% from the field). That was in a blowout (26-2 I believe), other than that it was probably 5 in a game... These were easy assists, passing across the crease for a quick stick on a run & gun team... & EMO... Think about how much of a team game the Ducks are playing... They recorded 9 assists on 19 goals... They didn't take 10 ISO's outside of that...

Good luck to all this weekend, hopefully this plea shows up in the stats books... You're robbing deserving players of their recognition...

[Blake]

Again, I still believe a ton of save stats are inflated on this site.

However, I will back up the Bearcat a bit. In a game between two quality teams, seeing a keeper make 30 saves is a rarity, and something special. However, my first game at Albertson College, I saw more shots (granted, not all on cage) than I did in probably 2-3 games at Utah.

Games that pit a new team against an experienced team actually do open the doors for something like this to happen. I'm not defending the legitimacy of 40 save games. However, mid 20's and even 30 saves are not completely out of the question.

[woulax4]

I just think its a tad odd to see numbers like that over and over again within one season. I mean no offense to anyone but Willamette's goalie has collected 36, 29, 23, 21 in his first four games. And there is no doubt in my mind that this kid can play, but I have been playing goalie for the better part of the decade now and have collected over 20 saves once in my carrier, I have even been playing goalie in this league for what is now my third year now and have never seen 36 shots on cage in a game. I will be the first to say that having great stats is nice, but when a goalie of a last place team has more saves in 4 games then I did all last season something seems fishy...

[Sonny]

I have been watching this level of the game since day one of the USILA/USLIA/USL MDIA/MCLA tournament and I will say this:

Anything over 25 saves is pretty rare.
Anything over 30 saves is Superman in the goal.

Look at the stats for other levels of varsity lacrosse (D1, D2, D3). 9 times out of ten, the keepers are recording saves between 10 - 15 - maybe 20.

[Dan Wishengrad]

I learned my lesson here last year about publicly criticizing how others keep game stats.

At Washington home games, we have parents who have been trained at their jobs work the table. Our Scorekeeper is Pat Scott, mom of Junior LSM Rick Martell-Scott. Pat kept score at Rick's high school games, and she has attended the clinic held here in Washington for timekeepers and scorekeepers. This is her third season keeping score (and stats) for UW. Pat is good, and unless a team has better numbers itself Pat's are available for official use there on the scoresheet, which the visitors get a copy of after the game. For our most recent game, Idaho's goalie shows no saves on the game summary, for instance, nor have the Vandals posted their shots. Here are Pat's stats for Idaho off the scoresheet, if you folks want to update your game report:

Goals by Quarter: 2-3-0-5 = 10

Shots by Quarter: 7-4-7-10 = 28

Saves (Wulff #1): 4-1-4-4 = 13

We're lucky to have Pat and Lenny Ruff, our Timekeeper. Thank you folks for your valuable contribution, and to all those volunteers who work PNCLL games for other schools.

[TheBearcatHimself]

but when a goalie of a last place team has more saves in 4 games then I did all last season something seems fishy...

OK, so I am the person who has entered all of our team's stats. If you would like me to show you the stat sheets that I have I can fax them to you, or photocopy them and email them to you. I think the key part of your statement would be last place team. Did you ever stop for 2 seconds and consider that we have a last place defense?

In Sonny's comparison to D1, D2 and D3 teams, he said 9 times out of 10 they make 15-20 saves, well 10 times out of 10 they have a defense that has played lacrosse before college. We don't have that luxury, so I apologize for that, it is what I have spent the last year trying to fix, and at a school with as small a student pool as Willamette, it's fairly slim pickings.

Please don't accuse people of cheating, and please don't insult players who have proven their worth on the field.

[woulax4]

ohh I totally forgot I went to a lacrosse powerhouse where kids from all over the country come to play for us...