USL power ratings: June 25, 2018

A new team finds itself atop the East… for how long? Don’t forget to follow the site on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for all the content on USL, US Soccer, and Nashville SC.

Table Power

USL East Power Rankings:

1. Cincinnati 2.89 (+1)
2. Nashville 2.76 (+1)
3. Louisville 2.76 (-2)
4. Indianapolis 2.29
5. Pittsburgh 2.27
6. Charleston 2.12
7. Bethlehem 2.00
8. Charlotte 1.76 (+1)
9. Penn 1.74 (+1)
10. NYRBII 1.65 (-2)
11. Ottawa 1.64 (+1)
12. Tampa Bay 1.45 (-1)
13. North Carolina 1.45
14. Richmond 1.37
15. Atlanta 2 1.11
16. Toronto 0.18

 

Louisville’s poor run of form (three straight draws, two of them against opponents they have no business drawing) has finally caught up to them, and it saw the Boys in Purple drop to third in the East (they’re about two thousandths of a point behind Nashville). This should be an interesting week, with “draws” everywhere Pittsburgh on Wednesday, followed by a wildly variable NYRBII Saturday. If LCFC can’t snap out of it – plenty of their struggles have to do with depth and injuries, to be fair – they could continue to fall.

It’ll also be an interesting week for the teams ahead of Louisville: Nashville has an OK opponent in Indy, then a should-be breather against Atlanta United 2, while Cincinnati has essentially guaranteed wins against the Canadian sides (though Ottawa is making that look less like a sure thing). That should set up a battle between the top two teams in the East by some margin the following week… but that’s a story for the next edition of these rankings.

Indy and Pittsburgh remain comfortably behind the top three, and Charleston and Bethlehem just a touch behind them. Pittsburgh is actually right up there in PPG, and finally getting a game against Louisville should help up the strength of schedule metric to bring them ahead of that pack (where it feels like they belong).

That leaves Charlotte, Penn, Red Bulls, Ottawa, and Tampa Bay looking like contenders for the final playoff spot. Charlotte and Penn have a slight advantage based on season-long performance, while it’s Penn and Ottawa who feel like the teams on the rise (Ottawa started the season so poorly – 0-4-2 – that their 5-2-1 mark since is easy to overlook).

Toronto is still terrible in basically every way.

USL West Power Rankings:

1. Real Monarchs 3.47
2. Swope Park 2.56 (+2)
3. Phoenix Rising 2.47 (-1)
4. Sacramento Republic 2.44 (-1)
5. Orange County 2.32
6. Reno 1868 2.07 (+2)
7. Portland Timbers 2 2.04 (-3)
8. San Antonio 1.91 (-2)
9. St. Louis 1.83 (+1)
10. Colorado Springs 1.82 (+1)
11. Las Vegas Lights 1.71 (-2)
12. Fresno FC 1.49
13. OKC Energy 1.28 (+2)
14. Seattle Sounders 2 1.19
15. LA Galaxy II 1.13 (-2)
16. Rio Grande Valley 1.08
17. Tulsa Roughnecks 0.68

Real Monarchs remain comfortably ahead of the pack; Tulsa Roughnecks destined to remain comfortably behind it. In between, there’s less stratification than on the opposite side of the country, but still plenty of it. The playoff race looks to have a fairly solid top five contenders (Real, Swope, Phoenix, Sacramento, and OCSC – also the top five in the current table, so that’s a solid standing), with chaos behind. Basically anyone other than Tulsa seems like a possibility in the more high-variance of the two leagues… though Galaxy, RGV, and Sounders also seem like longshots without major turnarounds in form.

Las Vegas Lights’s game-ending penalty… thing… had some ripple effects throughout the West, helping Swope Park rise to second in the conference, and dropping the Lights themselves an extra spot beyond what they would have with a draw. Some of the one-position moves are more related to that result than anything specific to Phoenix, Sacramento, et al.

Reno’s win over San Antonio, Portland’s slide after an 0-2 week (with one of those losses coming to suddenly-competent OKC)… plenty of mid-table shakeup, too. Galaxy sliding back after being fun and exciting for a couple weeks is something of a disappointment. Time for more 7-4 games one way or the other, folks.

The West is also closer to the finish line: 131 games played versus 113 in the East (may not sound like a lot, but it’s more than one additional game per team… though Eastern sides are starting to catch up in games played), so while the results are wackier week-to-week, it’s also like there’s an entire week less for variance to come into play.

Pure Power

Whereas the existing ranking system took into account result, regardless of score (except inasmuch as it means win/loss/tie), this new system is the opposite: it takes into account goals for and against, regardless of what the outcome is. This system also takes into account home/road split. It’s designed to be a bit more predictive for individual games, rather than final table position (as the above system is better for).

The methodology is to compare goals for/against to the average team playing the opponent in question, and a team’s power rating is the sum of its home and away average game scores.

Nashville remains No. 1 for two primary reasons: it’s a dominant side at home, and is the only one to score a goal in Pittsburgh other than the Riverhounds themselves. If and when #Lilleyball concedes at home again, NSC’s road score should drop considerably.

Charleston is a faller despite an OK result with a home draw against Pittsburgh (it was an above-average performance, but closer to the mean than Charleston had been performing at home so far this year). Bethlehem (home 2-2 draw to NYRB2), Tampa Bay (home loss to Penn FC), and San Antonio (home loss to Reno) all fall with legit bad performances – all more than 1.5 standard deviations worse than average. Colorado climbs with a 1-0 win over Fresno – may not look impressive on the scoresheet, but it’s almost an entire standard deviation better than average.

The best (and worst, from the other side) game of the week came in Montclair, New Jersey, with the home side – NYRBII in only their second true home game this year after previously playing in the parent club’s Red Bull Arena – getting smashed by Ottawa Fury. The Baby Bulls’ performance was 2.63 standard deviations worse than the average team hosting the Fury. The Fury’s win was almost exactly three standard deviations better than the average team traveling to play the Red Bulls (who had previously been a very good home team).

 

What it means for Nashville SC

I alluded to it in the original-style rankings at the top, but NSC looks pretty poised to make its way up the table. Indy is an above-average home team, but the Boys in Gold are elite at home (especially at First Tennessee Park – but we’ll get to Nissan Stadium in next week’s post). With a bit of revenge on the table, they should be able to get that win. ATL UTD 2 is bad both in the projected table and in the pure power ratings, and are slightly worse away, even.

Nashville has proven to be one of the best teams in the entire USL, and even if you think pure power overrates them (which IMO it does slightly), they have a chance to just take care of business from here on out and finish within the top three. They haven’t played any of the bottom three Eastern teams according to the final projected table, and none of the bottom four according to pure power.

Give me nine games (three against Atlanta, two of those at home) against the Canadian teams, Atlanta, and Richmond, and I’ll show you a heck of a lot of points. Even if NSC doesn’t complete the expected clean sweep of those sides, they haven’t already racked up any of those points (Louisville and Cincinnati have each already played three games already against that cohort).

Should be a good Summer, y’all.