While NWSL does not official have conferences or divisions, this is the second year in a row when the Challenge Cup had a divisional group stage, with the divisions being geographic in nature. As such, I think it'd be fun to see how the "divisions" stack up against each other! H/T to @newtex and @American Brummie over on the MLS forums for providing the general outline I'll use in this thread. (I will also try to retroactively calculate the 2021 results once I'm a few posts in on this thread.) In this thread I will only be considering regular season matches between teams of different "divisions". Thus, the East's dominance in the Challenge Cup knockouts this year will not be included in the stats - though, of course, I have just mentioned it in passing here. NWSL made it fairly easy this year with a perfectly balanced home-and-away schedule for all teams, meaning every team gets 16 total matches against teams from the other divisions, and a total of 8x12=96 cross-divisional games to consider (32 in each pairwise divisional match-up).
Intra-division games by week, 2022: Week 1: 4/6 (East hosts 1, Central hosts 1, West hosts 2) Week 2: 3/4 (0,0,3) Week 3: 3/6 (2,0,1) Week 4: 7/9 (2,1,4) Week 5: 4/7 (0,2,2) - end of May Week 6: 5/7 (1,4,0) Week 7: 5/8 (0,5,0) Week 8: 5/7 (3,0,2) - end of June (INT break) Week 9: 4/6 (2,0,2) Week 10: 4/6 (2,2,0) Week 11: 4/6 (1,1,2) Week 12: 4/6 (1,3,0) - end of July Week 13: 7/7 (1,3,3) Week 14: 5/6 (2,0,3) Week 15: 4/5 (1,2,1) Week 16: 5/7 (3,2,0) - end of August Week 17: 6/6 (4,1,1) Week 18: 3/7 (1,2,0) Week 19: 8/10 (2,2,4) Week 20: 5/6 (2,1,2) NOTE: I consider a "week" to be any Tuesday-to-Monday period with at least one game in it (in 2022, there is exactly 1 Monday game and 1 Tuesday game, thankfully not in the same calendar week) I request people check my math here, as the numerators should all total to 96 and each index inside the parentheses should total to 32... and it looks like I'm missing *one* game hosted by the East, somewhere. =-S
Week 1 results: LA 2-1 NC POR 3-0 KC WAS 2-1 RGN HOU 0-1 SD West wins the week 3-0-1 (2.25 PPG), followed by the East at 1-0-1 (1.5 PPG), with the Central trailing 0-0-2 (0 PPG) EAST NC 0-0-1 NJY 0-0-0 ORL 0-0-0 WAS 1-0-0 CENTRAL CHI 0-0-0 HOU 0-0-1 KC 0-0-1 LOU 0-0-0 WEST LA 1-0-0 POR 1-0-0 RGN 0-0-1 SD 1-0-0 Week 2 fixtures: SD v NJY RGN v LOU LA v ORL
Week 2 results: SD 4-0 NJY RGN 2-2 LOU LA 0-1 ORL The West gets the most points on the week with 7 (1-1-1, 1.33 PPG) but the East does better per game (1-0-1, 1.5 PPG), while the Central again lags behind (0-1-0, 1 PPG). Overall, this bring the divisions to 4-1-2 (1.86 PPG) for the West, 2-0-2 (1.5 PPG) for the East, and 0-1-2 (0.33 PPG) for the Central EAST NC 0-0-1 NJY 0-0-1 ORL 1-0-0 WAS 1-0-0 CENTRAL CHI 0-0-0 HOU 0-0-1 KC 0-0-1 LOU 0-1-0 WEST LA 1-0-1 POR 1-0-0 RGN 0-1-1 SD 2-0-0 Week 3 fixtures: ORL v KC SD v CHI WAS v LA
Whoops, got some catching up to do! Week 3 results: ORL 2-2 KC SD 2-1 CHI WAS 0-1 LA Week 4 results: LOU 1-0 SD POR 1-1 WAS POR 0-2 HOU LA 1-0 KC NC 0-1 SD NJY 0-1 LOU RGN 0-0 WAS ORL 2-4 CHI The West very clearly ran away with Week 3, but Week 4 proved to be much more mixed. The Central comes out best for the first time this season (4-0-1, 2.40 PPG) with a perfectly balanced showing from the West (2-2-2, 1.33 PPG) and some struggle from the East (0-2-3, 0.40 PPG) Overall, this bring the divisions to 8-3-4 (1.80 PPG) for the West, 4-2-4 (1.40 PPG) for the Central, and 2-3-6 (0.81 PPG) for the East. At this early point in the season, we can still expect some large swings in division PPG, but keep an eye on the Central division... They've only hosted two cross-divsion games thus far, but aren't far behind the West (who've hosted a whopping ten games so far) on PPG. EAST NC 0-0-2 NJY 0-0-2 ORL 1-1-1 WAS 1-2-1 CENTRAL CHI 1-0-1 HOU 1-0-1 KC 0-1-2 LOU 2-1-0 WEST LA 3-0-1 POR 1-1-1 RGN 0-2-1 SD 4-0-1 Week 5 fixtures: RGN-KC CHI-POR HOU-NC LA-NJY
Week 5 results: RGN 1-0 KC CHI 2-2 POR HOU 1-1 NC LA 0-1 NJY West and East draw on points but East did it in one fewer game, so they come away with the better PPG. Central lagging on the week, but honestly getting draws against POR and NC and a narrow loss to RGN isn't nearly as bad as the raw numbers are. Overall, this brings the divisions to 9-4-5 (1.72 PPG) for the West, 4-4-5 (1.23 PPG) for the Central, and 3-4-6 (1.00 PPG) for the East. My adult rec club is hosting a major tournament next week; after that, I'm hoping to get a more detailed home/away breakdown of games ready! It will involve a large, complicated spreadsheet X'-D EAST NC 0-1-2 NJY 1-0-2 ORL 1-1-1 WAS 1-2-1 CENTRAL CHI 1-1-1 HOU 1-1-1 KC 0-1-3 LOU 2-1-0 WEST LA 3-0-2 POR 1-2-1 RGN 1-2-1 SD 4-0-1 Week 6 fixtures: WAS-CHI (already played, sorry I'm late) HOU-ORL (space race!) CHI-RGN LOU-NC KC-SD (every game involves a Central team, four games hosted! This will be the Central's big test)
Week 6 results: WAS 2-2 CHI HOU 5-0 ORL (!!!!!) CHI 1-0 RGN LOU 0-3 NC KC 2-2 SD The Central does relatively well with their five-game week, going 2-2-1 for 1.6 PPG. The East is the only other division with a win, 1-1-1 for 1.33 PPG, and the West struggles at 0-1-1 or 0.5 PPG. Overall, this brings the divisions to 9-5-6 (1.60 PPG) for the West, 6-6-6 (1.33 PPG) for the Central, and 4-5-7 (1.06 PPG) for the East. EAST NC 1-1-2 NJY 1-0-2 ORL 1-1-2 WAS 1-3-1 CENTRAL CHI 2-2-1 HOU 2-1-1 KC 0-2-3 LOU 2-1-1 WEST LA 3-0-2 POR 1-2-1 RGN 1-2-2 SD 4-1-1 Week 7 fixtures: (Another huge feature of the Central division) LA-HOU CHI-WAS LOU-LA KC-NJY CHI-ORL
Off-topic here, but this reminds of when, during the Challenge Cup, people were saying Houston Dash were hopeless. Now, they're second in the rankings.