I think I'm gonna wait on this. Who knows what the roster of each team will look like by saturday at the rate we are going.
Chicago 1, Kansas City 2 Orlando 2, Washington 0 North Carolina 2, Portland 2 Seattle 0, Houston 1 Boston 0, SkyBlue 2
Can I brag a little that i was one of the two guys (out of 12) to predict Seattle Reign's win? (The other one was the guy with Seattle's crest as an avatar! ) 8 had predicted Houston's win and 2 a draw. I didn' catch the excat score, though: I wasn't as optimistic as to foresee a 5-1!
It's just my same "bad at english" problem. I assumed that since "guys" can be both genders (it does, isn't it? ), the singular could be also.
Well now that you ask I'll go into detail what my thought process was as I did not think my picks were out of the ordinary if you put more stock in the historical match-ups instead of the week 1 result . SBFC is a team that always start the season strong (win against defending champs in 2015 and a good Seattle team in 2016). Also Seattle have historically struggle to beat SBFC. I can only remember 1 or 2 games were it was an easy win. So them playing to a draw did not say much about those teams. I also did not see much in Houston's performance against Chicago that convince me they were a different team then last year where they also beat Chicago in that first game. Combine that with their 0 point record against Seattle and I was left bereft that most were picking them for the win. Now contrast that with a team like Boston who were actually quite impressive in their loss against a very strong FCKC defense. The Boston of last year would have folded like a cheap deck chair the minute they give up that first goal. But they continue to play their game and actually had chances to score. So I knew winning against SBFC was not a long shot. Now NCC/POR was a toss up as I think both teams are evenly match but I give the advantage to NCC as Portland is a terrible road team. As for Orlando they should have won that game but I under-estimated just how rudimentary their current offense is. The addition of Marta should help a great deal (if they get around to passing her the ball.)
I wasn't there last year, so I can't really judge by comparison, but I've got the feeling that those +1's are maybe too much generous? A guy guessing right that Houston scored 1 (for instance by saying SR-HD 1-1 or 0-1) gets the same as a guy who correctly guessed SR's win, but couldn't get the score or the goal difference right (because, well, 5-1 is hard to predict)? I mean: shouldn't this reward knowledge of NWSL? Guessing the total number of goals in match or the goals scored by one single team isn't a little random when you didn't get at all the actual outcome of the game? Mind, not sure what you could do about it, in fact. Maybe making those +1's into +0.5's?
Aw, geez... I was typing up the scores update and your post disrupted BS and now I lost it... Well, to answer: Guessing a single team's scoring capacity is not random. If you look at HOU's offense and SEA's defense and say HOU will score 1 goal, I think that's perfectly reasonable to reward, however off you might be with the opposite score. Also, you're forgetting that even if you miss the exact score, predicting a SEA win is still likely to get you more points than simply getting HOU's score right, since those +1's can also stack on top of getting the result correct. Any score with HOU losing while scoring 1 goal will get you 2pts, as would predictions of 4-0, 4-2, or any win with SEA scoring 5. Finally, precisely because 5-1 is so hard to predict, I don't think it should be used as an example to criticize the scoring method. You're arguing whether such a rare scoreline should be rewarding 1's and 0's depending on only the W/D/L alone versus rewarding 1's and 1's depending on both W/L/D and the ability to predict scores. Now, let me start back with the score report.
Alright, let's see how we did! Including numbers from last week... 59Amerinorsk - 6pts + 2+1+0+0+1 = 10pts / 10g babranski - 5pts + 1+1+0+0+1 = 8pts / 10g Blaze20 - 7pts + 1+0+3+2+2 = 15pts / 10g blissett - 3pts + 1+0+2+1+1 = 8pts / 6g BlueCrimson - 7pts + 1+1+0+1+0 = 10pts / 10g CoachJon - 5pts + 2+0+1+0+1 = 9pts / 10g holden - 8pts + 1+1+0+0+0 = 10pts / 10g lil_one - 8pts + 1+1+1+0+1 = 12pts / 10g Lucy - 6pts + 1+1+2+1+1 = 12pts / 10g lunatica - 11pts + 1+1+2+0+0 = 15pts / 10g Smallchief - 1pt + 2+1+2+0+1 = 7pts / 6g STT - 6pts + 2+1+1+1+2 = 13pts / 10g weelilbit - 4pts + x+x+x+x+x = 4pts / 2g = = = = = I will say in my previous response to blissett, I had addressed the +1 for getting one team's score right, but not the +1 for getting total goals in the game score. Both were inspired by comments that were (sometimes jokingly) made in previous seasons of the prediction contest, but while I think getting one team's score correct is a legitimate prediction reward, I'm thinking that the +1 for total goals is a bit more on the silly side... (I'm looking at my own ORL 2-0 DC prediction here.) What are people's thoughts on the total goals +1? Shall I revoke it?
While there is something to be said for the history of how the two have done against each other, this is a different Reign team than the one that dominated Houston in the past. So I don't think it's unreasonable to expect different results from them. (Plus, how was I supposed to know Matthias would be taken out early reducing the chance that she give up a PK? I guess I should've figured that after having the defense look fairly solid against Chicago, Waldrum would change it up so they were completely inept, though...)
I didn't fully check lineups but with Andressa hurt and Van Wyck apparently suffering from flu, some changes had to be made. Just not sure why you still throw your rookie keeper who missed some of preseason into that equation.