High Point-Delaware: Inside an Advanced Lacrosse Box Score

A hyper-diligent analysis into the High Point-Delaware box score probably isn't necessary, but I'm bored. I watched most of the first three quarters of this thing before getting hauled to a basketball game, so I was interested in seeing if an advanced box score matched my initial impressions of the game. This is what the advanced box score looked like:

Some brief notes on this:

• The biggest take away from this is that High Point was much sloppier against Delaware than many would have expected. Shooting nine percent is bad -- really bad -- but team's inability to find the back of the net is nothing compared to the team's rate at pitching the bean away. That's a horrendous turnover rate, one of the biggest motivators behind the team's disastrous offensive efficiency value, but these turnovers don't exist in a vacuum: The Panthers were also playing in a possession deficit on the day, which made all of those turnovers even more problematic for High Point. Scrubbing into the team's possession activity, around 88 percent of the team's offensive opportunities were box-possessions, which means that the Panthers committed most of their turnovers in a non-transition posture. Sustained offensive production requires both possession production (winning face-offs, getting defensive stops, killing rides, and corralling the bean in loose ball situations) and possession maximization (valuing the ball and shooting efficiently). The team's turnover rate -- High Point committed unforced turnovers and forced turnovers at almost an even rate, which is troubling for the second-year program -- crushed any hopes for the Panthers to maximize their offensive opportunities, thus exacerbating the issues the team had with generating opportunities and effectively getting the ball past Conor Peaks.
• Let's dig into High Point's shooting performance on the day, a 9.38 percent effort that should come with post game Lunchables:
• The team plunked pedestrian crossing signs in the parking lot on 43.75 percent of their attempts. That's fairly high, above the team's 38.19 percent mark from a season ago.
• Conor Peak's 83.33 save percentage is both indicative of being hot on the day and the Panthers giving him some cans of corn to stop. High Point gave Peaks tons of saveable shots and they were coming from one expected direction: Dan Lomas (Lomas took over a third of High Point's shots, more than 10 percent more than the team's next-highest usage player). The inability for High Point to vary its offense -- only nine players recorded a shot, six of which took two shots or fewer -- combined with Delaware's defensive execution ruined any opportunity that the Panthers had to find twine.
• Neither team shared the ball much during the game. The assist ratios are high, but the assist rates -- assists generated per 100 offensive opportunities -- is incredibly low.
• Delaware needs to take care on a go-forward basis to not play as loose as they did against the Panthers. The Blue Hens committed a ridiculously high amount of penalties and played almost 20 percent of their defensive opportunities in a man-down posture. (This actually makes Peaks' performance all that more impressive.) Discipline matters, and Delaware pushed the envelope on Saturday.
• Just some quick math: The possession margin meant about a one-goal swing on the scoreboard. Not too big. When you add in home-field advantage, that's about a two-goal swing in favor of Delaware. It wasn't the reason the Blue Hens won on the day.