#1 EOSR '13-'14: UT Austin
Many people will argue that A&M should deserve the spot so I'll get right to it.
The newly coded "Team Stats" option on my app coming out this fall.
Games included are all the games against Tier 1 teams that I have film of:
20 UT - LSQC 110* [Wolf Pack Classic II]
30 UT - LSQC 80* [Lone Star Cup II]
140 UT - Lost Boys 130* (OT) [Diamond Cup II]
160* UT - Texas State 10 [Diamond Cup II]
40 UT - Baylor 150* [Diamond Cup II]
60 UT - Baylor 90* [SWRC 2014]
110* UT - Texas A&M 50 [World Cup VII]
130* UT - Texas State 70 [World Cup VII]
UT didn't have a much better offense than A&M. UT had a far worse defense than A&M. But what UT had was cohesion.
UT improved between games. Take for example the two games against LSQC. Sure UT's offense in both these games was atrocious, but their offense did not get significantly worse. Their defense on the other hand improved so much. Look at the differences in the balanced indices for LSQC between the two games. That's improvement. Look at the differences in bludger control between the two games. That's improvement.
(Note: string representations are very specific to which team is designated as Team 1 and which team is designated as Team 2. All string representations of a UT game in this article take UT as Team 1)
This is not an isolated incident. UT only had two OSR losses all season. The one to LSQC above, and the one to Baylor below. In both cases in the span of less than a month (between Wolf Pack and Lone Star, and between Diamond Cup and SW Regionals), you could see *so much improvement* in the same matchup.
Again these two games were less than a month apart. UT doubled their rate of scoring and the effectiveness of both their offense (44.8 to 92.5)
and their defense (139.2 to 78.7). Sure they didn't win bludger control, but this is Baylor. Few teams ever do win the bludger control game against Baylor. And yet Texas increased their bludger control by 20 percentage points in 2 weeks.
Some will say this is just a fluke. Others will point to the fact that Texas did not show this improvement against Texas State (160*-10 at Diamond Cup became 60*-20 at SWRC and 130*-70 at WCVII). Others will point to UT's 90*-50 performance against Maryland at WCVII as proof that UT isn't truly that great.
Unfortunately there is no film of UT's 90*-50 against Tier 1 Maryland nor is there film of A&M's 60*-10 against Tier 2 Arkansas.
And as for Texas State, Texas did in fact improve between the matchups. It simply was that Texas State just played one atrocious game. It was uncharacteristic of them, while Baylor and LSQC's stats against Texas match up somewhat with their stats against A&M.
Texas improved even further against Baylor at WCVII. From what I am told, Texas actually won the bludger control battle against Baylor and managed to force the game out of snitch range.
Would Texas have been able to do the same against LSQC? That was a big question mark in the tournament, and many players sfeel that LSQC would have won that matchup. Indeed, I told everyone to bet on a UT-A&M matchup working more in UT's favor than a UT-LSQC matchup.
But the fact is that LSQC had lost the bludger control game to a weak A&M beating corps early that day, as well as to Kansas. Would they have really been able to stop a UT squad that held 85% against A&M and 60% against Texas State?
It is definitely possible. And it is definitely possible that LSQC could have still won in spite of losing the bludger matchup against UT, but given the stats it was unlikely. UT had only faced LSQC when they(UT) had a horrible offense. But at WCVII they had found their offense scoring >40% against both A&M and Texas State's 1 beater defense.
Many will judge UT on their OSR losses, especially the one to Baylor in the spring season. This is a mistake. There is a reason why UT has won two national titles and part of that is due to their ability to fix their mistakes. UT was criticized for their 'weak' beating during the early spring of 2013 following a loss to Baylor. They rebounded with one of the most dominant performances of beating strength, holding >85% of control for their quarterfinal, semifinal, and final matches at WCVI.
UT was criticized early this season by me as well as by several other analysts for their lack of an offense. They rebounded putting forth the best offensive performance ever seen throughout the season by a team not named TAMU.
Looking back, I cannot believe how I did not spot this weakness of A&M. A&M held ~15% bludger control against Kansas and UT. Say what you want about Kansas's 'hot potato' offense, and UT's '1 1/2 bludger' offense. They were the #2 and #1 teams this season in their ability to score against a 1 bludger A&M defense. (30% and 43% respectively).
No other team had that ability to score against 1 beater, and no other team had the ability to maintain that level of bludger control.
Lost Boys: 10.0% against 1 ....... 41.7% bludger control
LSQC: 27.3% against 1 ..... 55% bludger control
Baylor: ....22.2% against 1.... 73.6% bludger control
Is it any surprise that no other teams were ahead of A&M at time of snitch catch than Kansas and UT?
Here, for example is A&M's statistics:
Slightly better offense, MUCH better defense, but MUCH worse bludger control. Note the 1-2 difference in both teams. This implies that even though UT's offense and defense may not be as good as A&M's, their ability to keep bludger control helps them win games. Indeed, as anyone can see in the above UT games, the only thing that changed between horrible performance and great performance is bludger control.
Once again, we don't have the stats. But A&M gave up 55% control to LSQC, 73.6% to Baylor, 83.9% to Texas and 85.7% to Kansas.
This is not UT, who only struggled with the bludger control game against Baylor (and who ended up winning the bludger control game at WCVII).
This is A&M struggling to hold control against FIVE different teams (and who even knows about that ISR Texas State matchup that there's no film of).
Take out the Baylor games, and UT's bludger control % rises go 57%
A&M had a serious weakness here.
UT was never outmatched at WC or even SWRC the way A&M was. UT had a better offensive/defensive showing at BOTH SWRC and WCVII than every team they faced (sadly no video of Maryland to confirm/disprove this).
A&M stumbled not once, but four times at WC.
Once by letting Kansas hold 85.7% bludger control and score 30% of the time against 1.
Once by letting Arkansas within snitch range. (Although Arkansas is a good team, these performances are not pretty)
Once by completely losing the quaffle game to LSQC for the first time ever.
And once by completely losing the bludger game to UT for their first loss.
It is true that UT suffered some humiliating losses early on. A&M didn't have a great performance against Baylor either (Baylor was once OSR before their beater-on-snitch strategy doomed them). But the fact remains that UT rebounded and improved from these losses. A&M, confident in their 100% WIN statistic, continued to play the same style of play they always had.
Put it this way: UT proved that whatever weakness we saw in them at the start of the year had vanished. They didn't do this by winning games in WCVI fashion by 100+ points. They did this by making sense.
They weren't the offense we saw at Wolf Pack with sloppy passes, horrible catch attempts, horrible positioning etc. They were a team. Perhaps they were never as finely coordinated as A&M was, and I doubt they ever could be. But they were a team, and they were a fluid connected offense at WCVI.
They weren't the fast-break crazed WCVI style UT we saw them attempt to be at Diamond Cup. This team was slow, methodical, careful. Sure a crowd always loves flashy fast-break offenses, and sure some teams like LSQC could make them work. But Texas realized it wasn't one of those teams. The result is that very very few drives against Texas at WC were against 0 bludgers and a much improved offensive performance.
They weren't the frustrated beating team we saw at Diamond Cup. These beaters went and made hits and got bludger control back in incredibly short periods of time. That 40 dives at Diamond where UT couldn't get bludger control from Baylor? Try to find a single game at WC where the average bludger stability for the opposing team was more than 10.
They weren't the supposed 'weak' seeking team everyone thought them to be after they never caught the snitch against the Lost Boys, and lost on snitch grab to LSQC and Baylor. Their newly revamped beating corps learned how to play the snitch game and it showed. Seeker Margo Aleman, who proved his worth in fantasy tournaments this summer, also proved that all he needed was better snitch-beating and pulled off incredible catch after catch.
Perhaps if the Diamond Cup performance had happened after SWRC, or if the Wold Pack Classic performance had happened after the Lone Star Cup loss, I would have placed A&M 1st.
Perhaps if A&M had soundly beaten Kansas and Arkansas and LSQC I would have ranked them first.
But UT sent a message by their play in WCVII - a message that they had found whatever was wrong and fixed it. A message corroborated by the fact that each performance was stronger than the one before it, a message corroborated by the fact that there were no question marks on any of their wins at WC VII (if you're going to mention the injuries to David Gilbert and Drew Wasikowski, don't. I've already discussed how they wouldn't have changed the outcome of the games).
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