As many of you know, I come from a football background, where the NCAA has an exceptional online statistics database, with all manner of rankings – both team and individual – with comprehensive stats for every single player on every single team. There are even third-party sources filling a similar niche (through ESPN, College Football Data Warehouse, etc.).
So, why does such a thing not exist for lacrosse? The NCAA’s official stats website only lists the top 200 individuals in any category, and it ranges from inconvenient to impossible to find some of the important and/or interesting stats. Though the demand is lower in lacrosse, surely it has to exist.
Whereas I can see every football player who carried the ball just once or made even a single tackle for Western Kentucky or Akron, I can’t look at a goal-scorer’s statistics in any depth, or even at all unless he was in the top 200 in the nation. For a site that strives to use statistics to preview teams, back up arguments, or look toward the future, that makes the job quite difficult indeed (the individual faceoff improvement post was the biggest pain to research).
A comprehensive lacrosse statistics website would be welcomed with open arms. Since this blog is one of the big proponents of tempo-free lacrosse statistics, a lacrosse version of KenPom.com would be really cool (if you’re a college basketball fan and are unaware of Ken Pomeroy’s site, shame on you). I’m also of the opinion that a solid base of statistics would help generate interest in the game. Is this something that others would be interested in seeing?
LaxPower is trying:
http://www.laxpower.com/laxnews/news.php?story=25873