USL Power ratings: Aug. 20, 2018

Nashville’s (slight) drop continues, the East converging toward a top six, and the situation in the West remains hectic as always. 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

This rating method counts only opposition played and points attained in a given game – it is best used as a proxy for how the table is likely to play out at the end of the year.

USL East power rankings:

1. Cincinnati 2.99
2. Louisville 2.61
3. Pittsburgh 2.44
4. Charleston 2.33
5. Indianapolis 2.24 (+1)
6. Nashville 2.21 (-1)
7. NYRB 1.95
8. Ottawa 1.93
9. Bethlehem 1.89
10. North Carolina 1.79
11. Charlotte 1.63
12. Penn 1.49
13. Tampa Bay 1.47
14. Richmond 1.16
15. Atlanta 1.03
16. Toronto 0.55

Not a ton of shakeup in the East with a ton of draws and most results going as expected. Indy Eleven moved back past Nashville on the heels of a mid-week win and a weekend draw (compared to just the latter for Nashville) as the only switcheroo in the conference.

I’m starting to get a little concerned with Charleston’s multi-week trajectory (especially because I wasn’t much of a believer in them before the run of form they had – seems like they may be due for a bit of a regression to their true level), probably grouping them with Indy and Nashville rather than any of the three teams ahead of them.

At the same time, their season-ending home schedule is mind-numbingly easy: Red Bull 2 (a good team, but bad on the road), Tampa Bay (a bad team and particularly so away from home), Charlotte, North Carolina (the only solid road team in here), and Toronto. On the flipside, road trips to Louisville and Nashville are tough. They may see-saw between nice home wins and fighting for road results in the final weeks, which could stabilize their power rating, if not affect it a ton one way or the other.

The race for the final three projected playoff spots remains extremely tight. It also wouldn’t surprise me to see Penn FC make a small run and insert itself in that conversation. The City Islanders have away games the next two weekends, then close with nine straight home games.

We’re also starting to get close to some teams officially making (or being eliminated from) the playoffs. About three more wins for Cincy and two more losses for Toronto – depending on other results around the East – should start to clarify those situations.

USL West power rankings

1. Real Monarchs 2.91
2. Orange County 2.62
3. Phoenix Rising 2.47 (+1)
4. Reno 1868 2.34 (+1)
5. Sacramento Republic 2.30 (-2)
6. Portland Timbers 2.19 (+1)
7. San Antonio 2.05 (-1)
8. St. Louis 1.98
9. Swope Park 1.95
10. Fresno FC 1.76
11. Colorado Springs 1.57
12. OKC Energy 1.57 (+1)
13. LA Galaxy II 1.52 (+1)
14. Las Vegas Lights 1.46 (-2)
15. Rio Grande Valley 1.20
16. Seattle Sounders 1.12
17. Tulsa Roughnecks 1.04

As tends to be the case, there was a bit more excitement or the unexpected in the West. The big story was a nosedive from Sacramento Republic, which lost to St. Louis FC in the midweek and was trashed at home by LA Galaxy II over the weekend. Not a solid time for the Republic. With a rising Reno team coming up this week, they may continue to struggle a bit.

Phoenix bounced back after three or four rough weeks, and Orange County’s upward trajectory in the projected table continues (as we’ve seen week-to-week, the Pure Power has long thought they’re the best team in the West, and often the best in all of USL).

Like in the East, there will be some serious jockeying for the final playoff spot, maybe the last couple spots. San Antonio is currently falling back to that pack, while Fresno seems determined to join it. St. Louis and Swope Park are the pair currently straddling that line. It should be an interesting sprint to the finish. For what it’s worth, Swope Park does have the easiest remaining schedule among that group, even though they’ve seemed least impressive among it.

Pure Power

This rating method uses almost an opposite philosophy: focusing only on goals scored for/against in each game, without attention to individual results. It looks at the quality of offensive and defensive performance against each given opponent, with a home/road component attached. It’s more effective for predictive purposes in single games, rather than necessarily projecting the end-of-year table.

Cincinnati’s big win over a Charleston team that had been on the rise sees FCC finally scrape into the top two in USL (I believe for the first time since I’ve been doing this set of rankings, which began in mid-June). Pittsburgh and Phoenix also move up, mostly on account of a drop from Real Monarchs.

The Monarchs were one of the big fallers, thanks to a close call (a 3-2 home win) against a Tulsa team that is better than it had been, but is still one of the USL’s worst. The game itself was less than a standard deviation below the average home performance against the Roughnecks, but the standard at the top of the table is to be comfortably above-average.

Sacramento was unsurprisingly the other faller for the pair of games mentioned above. That the loss to Galaxy was not only at home, but a 4-1 destruction really hurts the Republic’s numbers – in fact, at nearly 2.5 standard deviations below average, it makes them a below-average home team. Rio Grande Valley (home loss to OKC Energy) saw a similar drop, though less extreme.

That allowed for Swope – which tied Reno on a controversial non-offside call yesterday – and those Galaxy to make big climbs.

What it means for Nashville SC

At this point, it’d be fair to say the mid-season slump has come to an end – three positive performances in a row indicates to me that any other issues going forward would be unconnected to the previous poor run of form – and Nashville simply has to perform to its level to have a strong finish to the year.

They aren’t currently in the playoff positions, but that’s primarily because of the low number of games played: they’re tied on points with Ottawa and New York, who both have at least one game more under their belts (Ottawa also has a much worse goal differential, but the first tiebreaker in the USL table is wins, rather than GD, because… reasons). Yes, you have to win or draw games in-hand to make that matter, but “game already lost” is worth zero points, whereas “game in-hand” can be worth zero, one, or three. I shouldn’t have to explain this.

A Bethlehem team that’s actually really good on the road is next weekend’s opponent. If NSC can win that one, they’ll be comfortably on track to make the playoffs, and in position to challenge for a first-round home game. After that, it’s hosting a Richmond team that’s awful regardless of location (but is the worst road team in USL by a healthy margin), and an important road trip through the Carolinas (@ Charlotte, @ NCFC) before an even more important home stand against a terrible Tampa team and the Charleston team that Nashville is competing against for a home playoff game.

With just 11 games left – seven of them at home – this stretch will be extremely important. You’d really like to have not only a playoff berth, but potentially that No. 3 or No. 4 spot in the table locked up before the season finale against Cincy.