Grit

The Meek May Inherit The Earth, 

But The Brave Will Win Ball Games

In investigating the shooting percentages of NCAA Division III men's soccer, the curious relationship between the 10 power conferences and their shooting stats was uncovered.  In a nutshell, the strongest conferences miss the target more often and score just about the same number of goals than the less-competitive leagues ("strongest" and "less-competitive" are highly debateable terms, but with all due respect to the teams involved, it's a useful shorthand.)

Here's the top ten leagues (it's actually top 9 but I'll update it soonish) with an overall goals-per-game average of 1.72 :


Now, the bottom 10 leagues, overall goal-per-game average of 1.64:


The bottom 10 miss the target somewhat less...they also play a weaker schedule, typically, but you'd also expect that weaker leagues are that because they have less talent, across the board.  So, conceivably, the shooting ratios could remain fairly even, but the top teams are skewed somewhat toward missing more.  Maybe those "better" players are over-confident and take shots from poor areas.  Or, better teams are better organized (better coaching??  That's hugely debateable) and so the raw offensive talent has a harder time breaking down better organized teams.  At any rate, I half expected to see the top leagues hit the target with noticeably greater accuracy.

So I'm somewhat confounded...

But, using the wonderful database at whoscored.com, where the data are recorded with more precision and reliability, I found the EPL offered some help.  Most DIII soccer matches have student statisticians who may or may not have a discerning eye when deciding if a ball headed toward goal was intended as a shot or not (among many other statistical gray areas).  For the EPL, I found this over two seasons:

This chart shows the Shots Not On Target as a percentage of all shots (X axis) and the per-game-average number of goals scored (Y axis) for the 17 teams to play in both the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons:

The EPL looked just as lousy as the top 10 conferences in terms of percent of shots not on target!... but something on whoscored.com caught my eye.  They track blocked shots...something the NCAA doesn't require.  When including blocked attempts, if we assume that all blocked shots would have been on target, the EPL squads suddenly look very different (both EPL charts are scaled to the same parameters, so while the dots are clumped, it emphasizes the huge factor blocked shots play).  Here's the proof:

So...NCAA teams miss the target way too much if we factor blocks into the comparison.  Of course, NCAA statisticians don't factor blocks, so perhaps things would look better if they did.  What do we learn from all this?  One, better teams are somehow more wasteful than less competitive teams...this needs much more research.  Two, blocking shots has a massive impact on your opponent's efficacy in front of goal...do NCAA defenders do nearly enough of this?  My gut tells me, though I have no data, that NCAA teams block shots far less often than the EPL players.  Which is crazy, because of all the skills required to play soccer well, standing in front of a guy kicking a ball isn't nearly the toughest to develop.