how does the quality of opposition impact a players' stats, and how do we rank each conference in the NCAA to evaluate it's overall strength? We used our in-house modelling to answer these questions.
Just like on the Men's side, the ACC ranks as the strongest conference in the nation. It's brutally tough, with 5 of the top 10 teams nationally.
Not far behind is the SEC, followed by the Big 10.
It's not surprising then we see the majority of NWSL players being sourced from these conferences. As pro teams look for players to make the jump to the best women's league in the world (according to our worldwide team strength model!) it's important you can evaluate players in tough games regularly.
St Louis for example, come in at #22 in the NCAA RPI. A very respectable ranking in a competition with over 300 teams. But it might not be as difficult for a player to rack up the points vs teams ranked 250+ in St. Bonaventure & George Washington.
Emily Gaebe & Hannah Larsson would be our two promising picks in the attack for St Louis, but their relatively weak schedule, ranked only 69 (the team with the toughest schedule in the NCAA would be 100) leaves a significant level of doubt about playing against better teams more consistently.
Using our player profile reports, we can see Larson leads the conference in Expected Assists, and ranks high for touches in the box and Expected Goals. All things a team would want when looking to recruit a difference-maker. But, she plays on a strong team and regularly faces far weaker opposition, so it's concerning she also loses the ball at a higher rate than other players in her position.
How would this translate to the pro game?
Let's now look at a player in the ACC - Louisville's Mackenzie Geigle.
We used St Louis as our 'base team' in for our player comparison feature - something college coaches are really enjoying in the Transfer Portal. Notice the small numbers at the top of her profile? Our team similar model show St Louis and Louisville play extremely dissimilar styles, that Louisvlle ranks 7 points higher than St. Louis, and that their schedule is 12 points 'harder'. These two rankings are out of 100.
Our professional team users can quickly evaluate not just a player's performance output, but also how easy or difficult their fixtures have been and how similar a player's current team is to theirs.
Our current NCAA clients also love this feature, saving them hours of research when navigating the transfer portal.
Here at Win Factory, for now, we're staying away from predictive type scores like 'player x will be Y good in your division'. Many people have tried this modelling, and even the best teams in the world, with an army of data scientists don't bat anywhere near 100 in the transfer market.
If you want to find out more about what Win Factory is doing in the NCAA or how we benefit pro teams around the world, fill out the form on the website or schedule a call with us!
Win Factory Team