My usual CRS season score (don't know if I ever hit it this season with any CRS game, though ) CRS 3 NC 1 (regulation) MVP: V. DiBernardo (goal and assist) ; other goals by S. Kerr and K. Johnson ; other assists by Y. Nagasato and S. McCaskill)
I just wanted to let @blissett know that I added this photo to my Woso screensaver this morning. Yuki Nagasato is an #NWSL fan favorite and a key part of the Chicago Red Stars' chances in tomorrow's championship game. She's also a huge music fan, and plays drums in a rock band. @thrace interviewed her about the latter: https://t.co/onqnPr84bT pic.twitter.com/4sfk0C6mYH— The Athletic Soccer (@TheAthleticSCCR) October 26, 2019 Davidson is out, Mewis is officially questionable. Naughton played in all three CHI vs NC games so far. NC-2 CHI 1 regulation MVP Debinha
Thanks very much, @CoachJon. I could miss the beginning of the match, this evening (starts at 20:30 here in Italy). I know, I know: I'll try my best to get connected in time to watch at least most of the game.
North Carolina 2, Chicago 1 in regulation. I think an X factor today could be Chicago's lack of experience in NWSL finals. Some of the Courage players will be playing in a 4th straight final, while Kerr is the only Red Star who's been to this stage before. The pressure could either cause them to crumble, or not knowing what to expect could work in their favor. MVP: Dunn.
Well, Yuki Nagasato played two World Cup finals (winning one) and an Olympic final. Quite used to the pressure of such games.
Right now, the BSBraintrust has a 2-2 game, with Chicago having a slight edge of 1.65 goals to 1.5 goals. So, I think that means the cyborg has Chicago becoming champion on PKs. And, it makes Kerr the cyborg's pick for MVP since she's the Chicago player with the most predictions for MVP.
Final reports will be coming on Tuesday, covering the balance of the pre-season playoff prediction part of the contest as well as the actual playoff prediction part. And, a total contest report, with all the combined results, will be coming at the same time. Stay tuned ....
Well, looks like in the end I shouldn't have gone with the upset prediction. Congratulations to the robot (and others) for nailing Courage's win in regular time and MVP Debinha (but not the score: no one could have, since it's in the "6-0 or such" department). It's quite ironic that the MVP of the Championship game didn't even make NWSL Best XI or second Best XI.
Here will be three posts, this one covering the Pre Season Predictions part of the contest, the second covering the Actual Playoffs Predictions part, and the third providing the totals for all three parts of the contest. For the Pre Season Predictions, here are two tables, the first showing a score summary and the second showing contestants' scoring by game (which went into part of the summary). Congratulations to lunatica and CoachJon for coming in #1 and #2 overall on the Pre Season Playoff Predictions.
For the Actual Playoff Predictions, here again are two tables. The first is a summary of the scoring. The second is contestants' scoring by game, which went into the summary. Congratulations to smallchief, who this time is the winner, followed ... again ... by CoachJon.
PS - If we want to do this again next year, I think we could make a couple of beneficial changes. One would be to revise the points awarded the different predictions so that the points better reflect the difficulty of making the correct prediction. The more difficult the prediction, the higher the award. I can generate the data needed, based on the 2018 and 2019 seasons, to show exactly how hard each type of prediction is. The second would be to review and possibly change how much weight we assign to each part of the contest, as reflected by the total points you can score in each part and by how hard it is to significantly outscore other predictors. For example, in the regular season score prediction part of the contest, one can score a lot of points but it's hard to outscore other predictors by much. On the other hand, in the actual playoff prediction part of the contest, you can't score a lot of points but it's easier to outscore other predictors by a a lot. Thus this year, although blissett did the fantastic and difficult job of winning the regular season score prediction part of the contest, blissett's lead wasn't large and it easily got wiped out in the Preseason Prediction and Actual Playoff Prediction parts. To me, that suggests that the latter two parts are over-weighted in the scoring system.
It's an odd balance to try to strike no matter how you cut it. For example, I would argue that the playoff probably "should" be worth more points than regular season games, simply by the nature of the competition. The balance between the regular season and the preseason is also something I've wrestled with before - the idea being that it should be worth enough to shuffle the regular season standings enough, i.e. predictors should be able to see some benefit to actually doing the preseason ladder. Before either the robot or cyborg existed, it was often the case that the preseason predictions didn't change much. Indeed, just looking at the scores above, there was a much larger relative spread in the regular season predictions than in the preseason ladder (or preseason playoff prediction) points. The only real game-changer was the real-time playoff predictions, and even then the "total contest" scores were honestly quite tight when it gets down to it - a spread of less than 30pts from 1st to 9th (similar too but smaller than the spread from just the regular season predictions). That's worth less than 8 regular season games (out of 108). I do agree some changes should be made, especially to how the regular season predictions are scored - IIRC I laid out a system a while back to account for blowouts and other discrepancies - but we don't want to make things too complicated or to devalue some parts of the contest too much. blisset can still absolutely claim the Predictor's Shield, at least! X-D