Ivy League ELO: Why Brown and Dartmouth are on upward tracks

Attack Darian Cook (Redding, Conn.) is one of Brown's top returning assets this season. (Brown University Athletics)

Editor’s note: With the 2022 Division 1 season just around the corner, we are examining a look at teams in the region through an Elo analytical perspective.

I’ve run through several of the New England programs and put them under the LacrosseReference.com microscope.

This isn’t going to contain very many predictions. My goal is to give you a sense of where each program is heading into the 2022 season and which players and games are likely to determine their success or failure.

Today we are going to cover the four New England teams from the Ivy League in two posts — Brown and Dartmouth first.

But first, let’s do something specific to the Ivy League. One of the ways I like to look at a team at the start of a season is the amount of production they are bringing back. My EGA (expected goals added) metric is the preferred way to measure this because it captures all the things that show up in the box score, good or bad, and puts them into a single number (it’s like WAR in baseball).

Since we haven’t seen the Ivy League teams in two years, it’s useful to see how much they are bringing back relative to each other.

To calculate returning production, you simply add up the EGA for every player on a team’s roster. Then you add up the EGA just for those players that are on the team in the following year. Divide the second number by the first and you get their returning share of production. We can do this for EGA generated by offense vs defense.

The chart shows the seven Ivy League teams. Teams to the right return a larger share of their defense. Teams to the top return a larger share of their offensive production.

Harvard returns the least on defense and the third-least on offense. Princeton returns quite a bit on defense but is at the bottom of the chart because of a Michael Sowers-sized hole in the offense. Yale, Dartmouth and Brown seem best positioned to maintain some degree of continuity. Of course, this chart is just offense and defense, which misses the fact that those faceoff units are inexperienced.

Brown overview

I’ll forever be making one-off adjustments to my models to account for Brown having a season with just one game last year. That database record is going to haunt me forever. Of course, it does mean that they are the one Ivy League team where we can look at what they bring back from last year.

Certainly, one game isn’t enough to draw conclusions about how good last year’s team would have been. But given the trend, it’s clear that one of the key tasks is going to be replacing Luke McCaleb. In 2020, he took 19 percent of the Bears’ shots and had 14 percenbt of their assists. His 12.0 percent play share meant he was the highest usage player on the team.

Statistically, replacing McCaleb’s production is going to come from some combination of George Grell and Reed Moshyedi. Both had equivalent ball security ratings in 2020, but Moshyedi was the better shooter. It’ll probably be easier to replace McCaleb’s shooting relative to his ability to create offense. That will be the primary offensive challenge for the Bears staff heading into 2022.

Schedule round-up

Brown overall SOS: 1604 (13th nationally)

Non-conference: 1586 (19th)

The toughest three-game stretch for Brown comes between April 9-23. Its average win probability in these three games is 28.1 percent.

Returning talent breakdown

It’s not that the cupboard is bare; it’s just that the players that filled it before aren’t here anymore. In fact, 49 percent of the team’s total production is no longer on the roster this year.

Offensive production: 61%

Faceoff production: 18%

Playing time: 42%

Goals: 55%

Assists: 65%

Players to watch

Below is a selection of players likely to have an outsized impact on the success of the Bears this year

Dartmouth overview

As an observer of college lacrosse, 2020 felt disappointing for the Ivy League teams. Several were looking good for NCAA tournament berths and I don’t think there was another conference in the country with more star power. I can only imagine how it felt for fans of the Ivy League teams.

Dartmouth’s 2020 didn’t have the same feel because even after a strong start, it probably wasn’t going to end up in the NCAA conversation. The Big Green finished 3-1, the only blemish a one-goal loss to Vermont in their last game. We’ll never know how they would have fared in Ivy League play.

That said, there may not be a team in the country that is on a stronger trajectory than the Big Green. I think it’s critical to adjust for the quality of the teams faced. And when we do that for Dartmouth, their 2020 start is remarkable in its contrast to 2019.

Using the opponent-adjusted marks, their offensive efficiency was 10 percentage points better (32.8 percent in ’20 vs 22.7 percent in ’19). Their defense was 4 percentage points better (27.5 percent vs 31.4 percent). Their faceoff game was 20 percentage points better (49.9 percent vs 30.0 percent). And their keepers were 6 percentage points better (59.3 percent vs 53.2 percent).

If Dartmouth can even just maintain what it was doing in ’20, this is going to be an interesting team.

Schedule round-up

Dartmouth overall SOS: 1563 (19th nationally)

Non-conference: 1466 (52nd)

The toughest three-game stretch for Dartmouth comes between April 9-23. Its average win probability in these three games is 9.0 percent.

Returning talent breakdown

While every team is going to have some gaps; the Big Green have more than most. They return just 64 percent of their overall production from their last roster.

Offensive production: 60%

Faceoff production: 86%

Playing time: 65%

Goals: 63%

Assists: 56%

Players to watch

Below is a selection of players likely to have an outsized impact on the success of the Big Green this year

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Zack Capozzi is the founder of LacrosseReference.com, which produces a range of advanced statistics for both men’s and women’s college lacrosse. For definitions of unfamiliar stats, refer to the LacrosseReference.com stats page.