Colorado 6, Oregon 5 FINAL (3/26/07 at Tempe, AZ)

[mholtz]

If the thing holding you back from doing live web stats is finding a dedicated web server, please contact me.

[Has No Left]

GameTracker is a custom ftp interface to StatCrew which was designed by the CSTV web team. If you are a CSTV school, and know how to properly navigate your athletic dept. (someone needs to say yes), it is a great way to post your stats live. Not all CSTV schools take the GameTracker package, but you get it automatically if athletics has signed up for the CSTV "Legacy" package ( I think thats what it's called)

[DG]

This is probably a discussion better served in the Polls forum, but I can tell you as a voter that I always consider games against varsity teams if those games were played as games, not scrimmages. There is no rule saying we ignore those games. If you do your research you can find out how the games were scheduled and played and also estimate how good the varsity teams are.

That said, I'm not sure where I'll be voting us yet. I haven't voted us #1 in years (even last year when we reached #1, I wasn't one of those votes - we promptly lost the next week, so I guess I was right).

It's definitely the most interesting year in the short history of the league.

JP,

It is interesting that you say you look at the games played vs. varsity opponents. I was always under the impression that those games (although very much on the schedule) did not count towards an MCLA team's "body of work." If those games do count, then certainly that changes how willing an MCLA team might be to schedule a tougher varsity opponent in order to expose their team to a higher level of lacrosse. I know if I was a coach, and I knew that losing to Whittier would hurt my poll standing, I probably wouldn't put them on the schedule. If, however, it wouldn't help or hurt me, then I'd definitely try to schedule a game...

DG

[horn17]

I think a lot of the reasoning why some pollsters dont take those games into the consideration, is because they arent as familiar with some of those teams. For example, growing up in Ohio - and playing D2 Lax before UMD, I was exposed to alot of these teams, and have an opinion about them. A lot of the players I played with/against and college, are involved with some of these programs - so I stay on top of them. In my opinion, it might be hard for someone from say, Arizona, (for example) to weigh that into their poll when they might know very little about that program, or the quality of lacrosse that they are known for. I can see where those with knowledge of those teams can take it into consideration, we as others might cast it out because of lack of information or knowledge.

By no means am I trying to say coaches are familiar with lacrosse across the country...but when its not our league, I'm sure not everyone watches D2 and D3 lax like others might....

[John Paul]

DG,

Just like any other team my judgement on a game result against Whittier depends on how good I think Whittier is at that time. (or any other team for that matter) If I think Whittier has an outstanding program one year and an MCLA team loses to them, especially on the road, I'm not going to penalize them. If I think Whittier has one of their weaker teams, I may penalize them slightly. If it's listed as a game then I assume we are all playing to win.

I make the assumption, perhaps falsly, that most poll voters are the kinds of guys who are fairly in touch with what's going in varsity lacrosse. Even if that's not the case, the broadness of our poll voting pool makes up for differences in perspective. Certainly there are a lot of differences even if you discount varsity games. It's fairly easy to get a read on varsity strengths though. Laxpower rankings, the laxpower forums, results, personal experience, friends in the coaching ranks, etc. are all clues that are at least as reliable as the similar methods we use to figure out how good MCLA teams we haven't seen are. The only thing usually missing is common opponents.

I would hope that counting varsity games toward the poll wouldn't prohibit teams from scheduling those games if they can get them. I know we play them simply so we can play more challenging games against organized, well-coached teams with good facilities - all rarities at our level. We never consider how they may affect the poll when we set up the schedule.