Disclaimer, I haven’t dug deeply into the underlying data in a while BUT regarding symmetry on outcome depending on side, I’d offer a different hypothesis:
The sample was NCAA level so I’d guess that shot selection skews the data. That is, a right-hander shooting from the “left-hander’s side” understands they’re in a disadvantaged position and thus select for shots that they understand are likely to score.
I also don’t know if the sample size is comparable from each position either.
I’m very curious to see if there’s still symmetry when we’re shooting in a controlled drill / experimental setup vs live game observations.
which questions the emphasis put on handedness.
Indeed, I remember a chat (on this board somewhere?) where the topic of USA WP not rostering as many lefties was discussed. Makes me think the performance coaching staff is way ahead of the curve
Thinking about this more and trying to judge what is a good shot vs. a bad shot.
Probably more specific to age group level instead of college, but a good shot for a team’s “shooter” from 5 or 6 meters is a bad shot for a couple other kids in the pool. If my shooter is open or has a clean lane from 6 or 7 meters I will take that chance most of the time and if I’m scoring it. I would not assess a negative value even if he/she misses the shot. That same shot from less developed players/arms is probably a shot I would not like to see and might assess a negative value to that shot.
In order to correctly score a game in this manner it takes someone with knowledge of the players and a lot of time after the game to go back to the game film.
Another variable to consider is the goalie. That same shot from 6 or 7 meters against Weinberg is not the same as against an average or below average high school year old goalie. That’s extreme, but for the sake of argument, we could say a national/ODP level goalie vs. an average goalie. I would start assigning more negative values for shots that we know are going to be saved by the superior goalie while we would be asking for more outside shots against a subpar goalie.
So could a scoring system adjust from game to game?
I think there’s a tension between what you’re describing and what I -personally- think a stats system should do.
In the scenarios from you and @NLM , I’m reading a direction where we’re trying to evaluate decision making in pool by looking at context.
EX:
1. Shot location in the pool
2. Shot targeting on the goal
3. Proximity of defenders
5. Strength of GK
And then you’d need to do something like compare that to potential other opportunities that a player’s teammates have. For example, a shot from the weak side on a counter attack is pretty good but if there’s an open shot across the pool that the shooter missed, it’s a bad shot.
I don’t know if we have enough data to control for all of the variables to mathematically prove if a decision was good or bad.
To be very clear, I think that it’s super useful to discuss and analyze a player’s decision without math (aka robots are not coming for coaching job’s yet!) but I just don’t know if there’s a way to build stat system to capture all of the nuances that go into playmaking and good decisions.
On the other hand, I think stats are very useful to describe player productivity.
In the near future, I don’t think a stats system would be able to independently and accurately conclude “Player X is a great water polo play maker” but we can compare individual player actions and results.
EX:
If Player X shoots 10 times, we can reasonably expect that:
3 are a goal
3 are tipped by the GK
2 are blocked and controlled by the GK
1 is field blocked
1 misses
I think a coach would be able to find areas for improvement if they compare this type of data between players over a season, a single game performance of a player against their season norms, etc
