I would think if he wants to move all the way back across the country JW at JMU will be in the mix at OSU. Was an assistant for UCLA national championship and the sport admin was at UCF when he was the assistant there. Has only been at JMU a very short time, but won the conference in year one and lost in tourney finals. His assistant is a decorated OSU alum as well.
Rhode Island just makes poor hires. Megan Jessee was part of a successful Wake Forest program but didn't have a big hand there. She wasn't ready to become a head coach and it painfullys show now. URI hired Michael Needham before that who did have some head coaching experience and was an alumnus. They underachieved under him as well, and he now is getting Ohio State to underachieve by taking a Sweet 16 program and turning them into just a bubble team in a short period. Places a lot of blame on his boss too. Within the A10, St. Bonaventure could make a change as well but I doubt they care. Don't see them investing in the program. I think this could be a year where young female head coaches would get looks at some of these decent opportunities. Katie Shields at St. Louis, Lindsey Martin at VCU, Kelly Kuss at Bucknell, and Erin Chastain at DePaul come to mind. People like Erin and BJ Snow will up for any good opportunity as well.
Totally agree about Needham- Walker at Ohio state isn’t a good coach and relies on excellent assistants to make the on field aspect of the program run. If she hires someone who isn’t a good on field coach she doesn’t have the ability to pick up the slack. Not sure what St Bonaventure will do; Manoj moved on to Stetson because they wanted to move him on. I don’t think they care about women’s soccer and Khettry challenging them to support the program mode rubbed people the wrong way. St Bonaventure want a coach who will shut up and just run program so if the current coach just follows their wishes maybe a change won’t be on the horizon.
Anyone hear if any schools are getting close to naming a coach? I'm not sure if it's Thanksgiving, coaches still coaching in the tournament or what. Seems like in past years one or two announcements of a new hire would have been made by now.
The seasons just ended two weeks ago. Coaching changes even less than that. Most universities have to go through HR procedures. Your timing is off. Coaches are not hired this quickly in the past.
Walters won’t be leaving JMU - Good set up for him. JMU looking after him and assistants. He will continue to be successful at JMU. Alums from JMU really getting back into the program with much support. A lot of positives for sure happening in Harrisonburg.
Here's a table showing how teams actually did as compared to how my pre-season simulation said they would do. The pre-season simulation assigns teams ARPI ratings based on their 2018 trended rating using the last 8 years' ARPI ratings to establish the trend (TR) and the average of the last two years' ARPI ratings (AR). The formula for a team's assigned rating is (TR + AR)/2. This is the best match, so far as I have been able to determine, for what teams' ratings are likely to be in the coming year. The simulation then applies teams' assigned ratings, as adjusted for home field advantage, to all of the season's games including simulated conference tournament games, to come up with teams' simulated records for the coming year. I then assign a team a simulated score for the year by giving it 3 points for each win and 1 point for each tie. Then, at the end of the season I assign the team an actual score by giving it 3 points for each actual win and 1 point for each actual tie. By comparing a team's actual score with its simulated score I then can see whether a team has performed consistently with its simulated (trended) rating or has outperformed or underperformed it. This year, for 121 teams, their actual and simulated scores were within 5 points of each other; for 81 they were within 6 to 10 points of each other; for 66 within 11 to 15; for 43 within 16 to 20; and for 24 were more than 20 points apart. Interestingly, when breaking teams into three groups based on coaching longevity (1 to 3 years, 116 coaches; 4 to 8 years, 101 coaches; and 9 or more years, 118 coaches), the variability as to their differences between actual and simulated scores was pretty much the same. At the top of the table are teams whose actual performance exceeded their simulated "trended" performance and at the bottom are those whose actual performance was poorer. In looking at any particular team, there can be many possible explanations for the difference, only one of which is coaching. And, although the formula for assigning simulated ratings to teams is the best match I have been able to come up with it's crude. Still, the table is one way to see how teams actually did as compared to what might reasonably have been expected. If you can't see the table, please let me know.
Question - you had Kent State as a "simulated score" of 19-0-1?? And because they were 10-8-2 they supposedly "under-performed"?
I don’t think you can really say this system works. Idaho state are up towards the top because they won 2 games instead of 0? They should be winning way more than 2 games a year. Predicting Illinois at 1 win simply doesn’t work. I don’t think this post can be viewed with any credibility about how these coaches have performed.
As I said, "In looking at any particular team, there can be many possible explanations for the difference, only one of which is coaching." Maybe you didn't read that? Regarding Illinois, here is their trend leading into this year. The trend has them in a big decline -- the -0.0186 rate of decline per year is extreme, one of the bigger rates of decline among all the teams. Illinois' actual Adjusted RPI turned out to be 0.5743, which is much better than what their trended ARPI would have been. That is what the table says and it is all the table says. How you interpret it is up to you.
"They should be winning way more than 2 games a year." Prove it! Here is their chart. They've been on a decline. They outperformed what their trend says they would have done this year, which would have had them winning 0 games. Instead they won 2, which is an improvement over their trend. That's a fact. And, that's all the table you are complaining about says. Again, may be you didn't read the introductory text carefully.
Their chart, showing their trend over the last 8 years, is below. Their ARPI this year was 0.4871, which under-performed their trend. That's what the numbers say. Is that good, is that bad, is it a problem? That's for you to conclude. The table above simply shows what the numbers say.
Ok, since we've been given the freedom, then this is how I will interpret the information: it is ridiculous. There are so many errors and wild simulations not reflective of reality, then the information it is predicated on is inaccurate. It is something that makes sense on paper and away from the field - but no coach would put any credibility in it.
This is a lot of data which doesn't take into consideration that people are playing the game. Injuries occur, different teams "gel" and different teams lack player leadership. I think that there is a lot more to consider than numbers to see if a team has overperformed or underperformed. Coaching can help overcome some team chemistry/leadership issues but sometimes you just get bad luck. I think a really telling piece of data would be the number of kids who sign who actually stay and play all four years. Lots of transfers out means that something is wrong with the coach/staff. Either they're not recruiting properly (kids who can't play at that level), recruiting bad character, not being honest with the kids on their playing ability (you know the coaches who promise everyone they'll be seeing significant minutes) or it's bad leadership/coaching.
I've been talking about doing a "retention ranking" in D1 women's soccer for years but don't have the energy or interest to do it myself. It would be very telling and a better indication of the health of a program than RPI prediction trends but again, would only be one way to use data to evaluate a program. Such a 'retention ranking' would be horrible for say Clemson, who turned over their rosters over a couple coaching changes. But that's a good place to be I'd argue under a good coach. And this RPI trend data must be taken for what it is and was described to be by the author. If anyone thinks UMBC, winning 2 games, is in a better place than Florida is or that Nikki at WVU should have gone undefeated is crazy. True that Florida and WVU 'underperformed' this year but to use this data to contend that American is a 'better' program with a better coach is truly a misuse of the data and is crazy. The only reason AU is at the top of this list is because they've been terrible for years! And the opposite is true of WVU and FL. All of this with a grain of salt. Lots of people have lost their homes trying to "predict" or "model" competitive sports, must less college women's soccer!
I give cpthomas a lot of credit for accumulating this data, scrubbing it, and trying to come up with a useful model. If you are familiar at all with modelling you would concede that this is a very complex system. Most of the haters are making valid points especially pointing out it doesn't account for injuries. But once you start trying to account for things like that you just add more and more subjectivity. My critique might be that using a linear forecast fit over the past n-years is probably not optimal either. When you try and model a system like this it will always produce some forecasts and conclusions that don't pass a common sense filter... and any time you try and model human performance it gets that much more difficult. I think the idea of measuring how a team does against a forecast based on how the coach has performed over their tenure at that school can be a useful measure to suggest what kind of coach your program has and if progress is being made. You can certainly argue that a forecast of one win for Illinois this year is ridiculous, but I think everyone should agree that Illinois did outperform expectation this year. Many think Illini should have squeaked into the NCAAs over Northwestern. I don't think anyone would argue that Penn did in fact over perform this year, and Cal and Florida underperformed. The model points those things out. Don't let the haters get you down cp... most of the group is thankful you put this stuff out there and let people argue about it.
I should add that the table I posted most definitely was not intended to rank coaches in order of how good they are. I thought that was obvious, but maybe not. It only shows how they did in relation to their teams' historic trends. Here's an interesting piece of info related to the simulation itself, for evaluation purposes: The simulation predicted how teams would rank in their conferences by the end of the season. So did Chris Henderson, who has a more complex system that takes into account things like players who graduated and players coming in. And each conference's coaches did rankings for their teams. The coaches' rankings, on average, were within 2.03 positions of where the teams actually ended up. Chris Henderson's rankings were within 2.20. The simulation's rankings were within 2.24. For teams getting into their conference tournaments, Chris Henderson correctly picked 146, the simulation 143, and the coaches 142. These were just about what I had expected, except that the coaches did a little better than I expected. They actually do know a good deal about their conference opponents. So, the simulation is competitive with about as good as you're going to get from people who have spent a whole lot of time on the details or who have a whole lot of direct knowledge. That doesn't say the simulation is really good. It isn't. It does say that it's about as good as the best you're going to get from humans -- which isn't really good either. Upper left got it right, the simulation provides just one way to look at things. Take it with a grain of salt, take the human experts' predictions with a grain of salt, and it's probably wise to take your own with at least as big a grain of salt.
I AM actually thankful and find interesting much of the information cpthomas puts out - and always good to look at things from a new angle. Simply because someone doesn't subscribe to a particular forecast or model - doesn't mean they aren't familiar with modeling or are a hater.
A turnover of roster due to a coaching change is fairly common. The new coaches generally want "their" players. A team which is losing players year in and out like some of the teams with current vacancies did over the past four years (with the current coach's recruits) is a fairly telling statistic and one which I think should get you on the hot seat. That and lack of quality results is what resulted some of those coach's jobs.
True. And also, players may have been there for the coach that left, may not want to play for the new coach, and may transfer out. Along those lines -- players leaving, for whichever reason -- I'm wondering what in the world happened at UConn. Something happened there, for them to have taken such a nose dive. Did players leave? Did a whole boat load of players graduate? Is the new coach terrible? Anyone know?
Their two leading scorers from the previous season were injured and missed the season. They will will be better next year with those players back.
Connecticut will always be good in that far flung conference nestled in the 95 corridor money. Will be first division with the two Florida schools. They're not moribund as they scored goals in several losses, that's a telling sign.