If 6/8 is going to represent themselves as a professional organization they need to have professionals keeping track and actually paying attention…their WPE stats for some of these games are an abomination…cant even get cap numbers right, deciding to note some plays, not others, being on their phones and having to be reminded to pick up the tablet by a table mate…
Joke…
Scrap it until they can figure it out…or 6/8 dont be so blatant and out front about your “awesome” and “revolutionary” scoring system.
Agreed. I kid shooting 6 of 12 would be considered someone the team is obviously relying on and 50% at that clip is good. That is worth more than a 3.9 if I did the math right. Also if a kid is a teams primary scorer there is a reasonable expectation that the defense is focused on them and that kids ability to get 6 goals off is even more impressive. As Gibson says, eye test still matters, the opponent quality matters, etc. It is not an exact science and definitely open to a ton of thoughts on values for each element. You could think about a penalty for a shooting percentage below say 30% as an example (or whatever % implies poor performance). The long shots at the end of quarters shouldn’t count against stats at all. Everyone may not be aware but basketball has already implemented the practice of those not counting against players percentage and I believe there is starting to be that same philosophy in water polo but may not have rippled through everywhere yet.
Agree with you. In our case we use a different system that is closer to what you are describing. You could also easily make the case that minutes played have a very high impact on a player and their score.
The problem that I see with 6-8 is that it is vanity-metrics centered. In other sports the emphasis and the systems used are much more centered towards analytics and a more codified version of what Gibson refers to as the eye test.
I think of the shot percentage as an effectiveness measure. Is the player good a turning shots into goals? Adding minutes played creates an efficiency measure. How many points per minute can a player generate? It would definitely be a helpful metric. The challenge is an input problem. As several other people have pointed out, the 6-8 data is variable based on the skill of the person collecting the data at the game. Adding player time tracking will up the complexity. Personally, I think the answer is capture good video (possible with an iphone if it’s set to 1080 or 4k resolution and 60 frames per second) and do the data input after the game. It’s not ‘live’ but would be more consistent and accurate.
We’ll know the performance models add value when the sum of the individual player points reflect the scores for each game. Obviously it won’t be a perfect match but we should expect to see a close game have very similar aggregate points and a blowout have many more points on the winning team’s side. I don’t know if 6-8 is provides this information currently.
Finally, 6-8’s value proposition is that they’ll make your kid a better water polo player. It makes sense that they would want to provide objective data to back up their claims. That said, I agree with you, the metrics are all answering ‘who’ questions - who’s the best shooter, who draws exclusions, etc. That’s not all the data coaches need. They would benefit more from answers to ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions - how did our opponent draw 14 exclusions? Why did was our save percentage 20% better than average last game? These are insights to the effectiveness to team strategy/tactics. It goes beyond assign individual praise or blame.
I compared the 6-8 stats from a Futures game to the actual results. Good but not great. It seems they got the goals correct. Not all of the shots. Some turnovers/steals can be questioned or are wrong. Exclusion earned and assists sometimes are either missing or wrong.
I sincerely do not think a single coach in all of water polo relies on these stats or even considers the Score evaluation. That said, if anyone was and they are publishing knowingly incorrect information, that seems potentially problematic.
Was this a game that had a paid person as the stats keeper? If the person is a volunteer with no training then it seems about right? If the game in question has video maybe the stats can be disputed?
I’m new here but we use GameChanger for video and stats. GameChanger only has goals, missed shot, assists and saves but I am trying to get them to add exclusion, turnovers and others. I like it because it tags a 1minute video clip to that specific stat to the specific player. So any player and coach can go back and watch it instead of having to fast forward or rewind any film trying to find a specific play in a match. I don’t coach but my daughter likes to watch her missed shots to see what went wrong and our coaches use it as film study for the girls
Maybe I’m being naïve, but if I was 6–8 , I would have converted their system to be ChatGPT-based.
• Upload the rosters.
• The announcer simply describes the game—similar to the GOLS commentators—and the audio or transcript is uploaded to ChatGPT, which converts it into a detailed statistics table.
• It’s far easier to follow and describe a game via voice recording than to track the screen, search for cap numbers, and manually input each stat.
• This approach would require minimal programming or training and could largely rely on off-the-shelf tools.
Their +/- is by and large useless. It is better to provide a way to download the stat and each coach creates her own synthesis.
It’s one of the things that we do (voice to data). As RoundMound34 mentioned it will still go back to who does the data capture.
But again, I really think that what 6-8 is trying to focus on is far different from the type of packages coaches can use to do post-game analysis, let alone, in-game analysis.
which means the player who shoots 1/10 has the same score as the player who shoots 1/1 - assuming all other stats are equal. Maybe a certain number of missed shots needs be a negative?
Newbie polo watcher but curious for thoughts on goalie stats. I’ve noticed that players on lower seeded teams (ie not typically top noted goalies) will take top spots in rating. It is correct to assume this could be due to more shots on goal due to poor defense or easier shots to block?
Also, given the near universal disagreement on what is a turnover and on whom it should be assigned, the -.92 weight to turnovers is very impactful and the most misleading.
In particular, penalizing a Center for a “turnover” on a last-second bad pass feels inconsistent and overly punitive. @polames’s idea of introducing a performance “threshold” (for example, shooting percentage below/above 50%) should apply to other positions as well, including Center.
Additionally, Exclusions Drawn and Penalty Drawn should be differentiated, as should Penalty Shot goals versus goals scored in live action or on 6-on-5. Given the difference in scoring probability, a penalty goal should be weighted at 0.5.
Why is there no corresponding “penalty” applied to the Center defender when a Center scores? Preventing Center goals is a core responsibility of that defensive position.
If we can identify this many obvious flaws, it suggests that the current +/- metric is still raw and not yet useful for player ranking, especially when comparing across different positions.
I would think winning a sprint would mean something too. The USA water polo press release today says Ryder Dodd “led the Bruins and finished second in the conference in sprints won with 39 on the season” so they think sprints are notable.
I am a fan of any company that is investing money into a platform for stats for water polo but considering that everyone keeps saying the stats are only as good as the person inputting the data, seems to me the stats that are easily identified and correctly entered into the platform by the average stat keeper should matter (i.e. shots made/missed and sprints) even it is just a little
