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D1 Lacrosse Parity Is Real, We Have PROOF

The term “D1 Lacrosse Parity” is a long-standing topic of conversation. In 2016, the topic has been thrown around more than a ball in Denver’s offense. While the the dictionary definition listed below is quite clear, what parity actually in this argument means different things to different people.

parity
par·i·ty /per-ə-tē/
1. the quality or state of being equal or equivalent

D1 lacrosse might not be a place of perfect equality, but to some people, increased parity simply means that more teams have a shot at winning the championship this year than in years past. This is the question I want to answer.

For most of D1 men’s lacrosse modern history, you could only win if you were Syracuse, Hopkins, Virginia, Cornell, Maryland, Princeton, or North Carolina. From 1971 until 2010, those were the results.  Since then, three new teams in Duke, Loyola, and Denver have been added to the winners’ circle, and Denver’s Bill Tierney is the same guy who added Princeton to that list.

love_mens_lacrosse
Photo Credit: Craig Chase

This is why parity in lacrosse is so important to so many people: Coaches can string together a great recruiting class or two, get all their chemistry working, dominate their conference, and fall to a traditional power who adds another trophy to the case. It’s obviously not as simple as all that, but the frustration from “lesser” programs was evident, and it used to happen all the time.

With the explosive growth of lacrosse at the youth and high school levels across the country, Division I is starting to hit a saturation point in talent. Every team now has the ability to load up on kids who have been in their state championships, been named a HS All-American, dominated the juniors ranks in Canadian box leagues, and just need to find the right school to show off their talents.

boys latin vs the hill academy
Photo Credit: Craig Chase

Look at Kevin Crowley, the only player to be the #1 pick in the MLL and NLL graduating from Stony Brook instead of Syracuse or Virginia. Trevor Baptiste took the country by storm and was a late commit to Denver after being accepted to D3 F&M. They are both great examples of top level talent turning up in unexpected places, and in non-traditional ways.

So with all this talent getting spread around, has that saturation point truly been reached?

This year certainly seems like it, as Duke, Hopkins, Loyola, and other highly regarded teams have suffered head scratching losses. Seemingly every team is vulnerable and it feels like the old college lacrosse scripts are no longer relevant. But, with only anecdotal evidence to point to, we can only say we think parity has arrived. I’ve done this myself. So have several other members of the lacrosse media at all different levels.

But if we are just using our own memories of how things were and take games week to week to form our own opinions, then that’s all they are… opinions and memories….  or as it is stated in the words of “The Dude”:

[fvplayer src=”https://youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c” splash=”https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pWdd6_ZxX8c/hqdefault.jpg” caption=”Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”]

Not being one to just settle for this as an abstract idea, I decided to poke at the data behind this a little bit. Was there some way of actually showing that there is more parity in college lacrosse now than there used to be?

To figure this out, I went to the good people at LaxPower.com, and pulled the scores from every D1 game played since 2005.

So. Much. Data.

My first crack at the data was to see if there has been a rise in the frequency of overtime games. Perhaps more teams having more talent meant they would need extra tie to decide a winner?!?! That seemed plausible!

Well, it turns out that’s not the case.

While 2007 was the low point in this 12 year period (only 7% of games went into OT), most years were eight, nine, or ten percent with no trending in either direction, and 2016 is similar. Before we totally scratch that theory, did anyone think that nearly 10% of all D1 lacrosse games historically go into OT? I sure didn’t! Moving on…

My next idea was to look at winning margin. The average goals scored by the winner each year is in the neighborhood of 12 while the losers all sit around seven. So if you see a 12-7 lacrosse game, that’s about as average as you can get. There was some slight trending in this category, but not in the goal difference. As the years have gone on, scoring has gone up nearly a full point over these 12 years. Unfortunately, this does next to nothing regarding the average margin of victory. Yes, teams are scoring more, but that is the case for both winners and losers. Next theory, anyone?

Not wanting to give up yet, I rethought what parity is a little bit.

Maybe looking at the entire division as a whole isn’t really fair. Going back to the anecdotal evidence I first mentioned several paragraphs ago, the tangible evidence of parity consists of things like Syracuse’s final four streak ending, first round upsets like Bryant over Cuse, Ohio State over Duke, then games like Richmond over Duke recently, Hofstra’s win over UNC recently, and BU’s sudden success.

Boston University BU lacrosse navy d1 lacrosse parity
Photo Credit: Ryan Conwell

So maybe what parity really means is that the traditional schools are just more beatable than they used to be?

To test this theory out, I made a list of who I considered “traditional” powers over the past 12 years. These are your final four regulars and regular season juggernauts. This lists consists of the following 12 schools because my thoughts were while they all have had great years and bad years, as a group they are pretty consistent. You never really have a year where half of them just don’t show up.

Those 12 are: Cornell, Denver, Duke, Hopkins, Loyola, Maryland, UMass, UNC, Notre Dame, Princeton, Syracuse, and UVA. Princeton may have been a slight reach given the period, but I still counted them in since five of those years were with Tierney at the helm and they did win a couple title in a row.

Now these schools comprise nearly every final four team and every champion in that time span of 2005 to now. That means they are winning their ways into extra game this whole time as a group.  That gives me reason to believe that as a percentage of overall wins at the D1 level, they should be pretty consistent. Sure, there have been some new teams added in that time span (13 to be exact), but most of those schools are still not racking up wins yet on a consistent basis.

What I found was actually pretty surprising, and it does support the idea of D1 Lacrosse Parity.

D1 Lacrosse Parity Is Real.

The highest percentage of wins that these schools had was 2009. Syracuse beat Cornell in the championship, but these 12 teams were also comprised all eight of the quarterfinalists for the NCAA tournament. In fact, only Loyola and Denver did not make the tournament that year out of that group. That gave this group of teams a total of 32.4%, or nearly a third, of ALL of the wins in the country that year. Twelve teams had a third of the wins. Wow.

2009 is an interesting one because the very next year would see Duke and Notre Dame play for what would have been the first NCAA title for either team. Duke of course won in a defensive battle and Virginia would follow with their shock the world title in 2011. Loyola would then win their schools’ first in 2012 before Duke would capture back to back titles in 2013 and 2014. That brings us to Denver’s win in 2015.

ohio-state-lacrosse-denver d1 lacrosse parity
Photo Credit: Molly Tavoletti

2009 represented the peak of this group’s dominance as a total group win percentage, and then a new era of champions was ushered in.

From 2010 to 2015, only Virginia’s title would be from the main seven schools who rotated wins.

In this same time period, while this group still was winning the titles and dominating championship weekend appearances, their percent of wins over the year would actually decrease, and decrease regularly:

2005

28.3%

2006

29.1%

2007

30.7%

2008

31.0%

2009

32.4%

2010

31.1%

2011

30.6%

2012

31.9%

2013

28.7%

2014

27.4%

2015

25.7%

2016

21.4%

There was a slight uptick in 2012, but the percentage of wins as a group has decreased every other year. Based on the data as of March 14th, those main 12 schools are responsible for just over 20% of the wins this season. Last year in was just over a quarter despite the ACC’s dominance of out of conference regular season games. You can see that this feeling of parity we have in 2016 is well justified.

Is this rationale perfect? Absolutely not, but I feel that it’s a good start and allows us to grasp the concept a little better. We are also not even halfway through the season, so there is plenty more lacrosse to be played, and things could swing in the other direction… But if the past few years are any indication, the traditional powers need to remain on notice.

So our proof isn’t iron clad, and it’s not set in stone, so will this aggression stand? What are your thoughts? I honestly want to know what everyone thinks about this! Is parity here, or is it just an illusion? What’s your opinion, man?