Scoring efficiency in the past
After writing about Jam-Kaos game I started thinking of what is the scoring efficiency in high level games in general. I have no recent data on that (except from a few selected games). However some time ago I got from Sholom Simon some RUFUS stats from mid-90s.
In 94 Nationals (pool play - 2 pools of 6) in women’s division the average efficiency was 29.8 %. The highest efficency for a team over these 5 games was 42.7%. The lowest: 15.7 %.
In 95 Nationals (pool play - 2 pools of 6) in open division the average efficiency was 42.8 %. The highest efficency for a team over these 5 games was 56.3%. The lowest: 23.6 %.
Those numbers were the easiest to come up with. For the missing divisions (women 95, open 94) and some more detailed analysis for different level of teams (semifinalists, etc) I need to import the data to Excel. But that will happen only in the evening after work…
[UPDATE]
Jim Parinella provided summary for Open nationals 94 - see his post below.
Women’s division 95: Average 30.4%. Min 16.1%. Max 48.3% So not much difference.
September 15th, 2005 at 4:39 am
Wow. 29.8% seems really low… Even the the team with the highest efficiency was under 50%! I hope that these numbers have gone up since then in the women’s game.
Of course, I was just compiling some stats for Fury this past weekend at Sectionals, and even in a game that we won 13-3, our team’s total scoring efficiency was only 56.52% (and the other team’s was obviously much lower). I’d have to review our stats from more competitive tournaments to see how the difficulty of a game affected the scoring efficiency.
September 15th, 2005 at 5:44 am
This is just scores/posessions, right? I’ve always thought the game is most interesting when this number is right around 50%. If open elite was that close to 50% in 1994, I would bet the average at open club nationals is well over 50% by now.
It would be interesting to get these stats at an elite tournament in calm conditions, to see how boringly O-dominated things can get. There are at least some stats from 2002 fall nationals, where one game famously had 5 turnovers total in 38 posessions. Furious had an 89% efficiency that game, DoG 84%. Yikes.
September 15th, 2005 at 9:27 am
The Furious-DoG game may have been yikes, but the other games of that tournament were normal. In the finals, Furious was again close to 50% (although their O line was a little better while their D line played worse).
I doubt that teams are much better than 50% now. Even if they are better throwers, what happens is that instead of taking the same throws at a higher efficiency, they take riskier throws (perhaps non-optimally). It’s like with seat belts or airbags or owning an SUV. People drive faster and more aggressively because they think they’re safer, but their changed behavior eliminates the safety. In effect, they trade increased safety for increased power or excitement or something. So it goes with ultimate.
September 15th, 2005 at 9:50 am
Also, take a look at http://www.shelltown.com/~parinell/offense.sta and http://www.shelltown.com/~parinell/defense.sta for stats for 1994 Open. Teams ranged from 32.2% (Big River (St. Louis)) to 60.2% (DoG) on offense (average 42.6%), and 31.8% (Cojones) to 52.5% (Miami) on D (hmm, average was 42.5%, probably just a math error somewhere, as I compiled everything by hand).
September 15th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
Gracias, Jim. Now I just need to Excelize the women’s 95 data.
And yes Tarr, the numbers above are scores / possessions.
In WUGC 2004 final Furious against Condors the numbers were 56% and 50% respectively. In women’s final (Canada against Finland) 38.6 % and 30.2 %.
My gut feeling also is that on average the scoring efficency has stayed about the same.
I guess the Team USA in World games statistics and scoring effiencies are easiest to find at http://www1.upa.org/wg2005/stats (there should be a summary page somewhere, although I did not find it today. I guess I should work that too in Excel as I have all the stats there… here goes the rest of my free time…