[M T]

I didn't grow up playing or even watching soccer and am recently enjoying the Stanford teams, so I'm not familiar with the subtleties, but some things seem odd to me.

The Stanford women seem to be significantly better than their opponents.  16-2 in games, 345-109 in shots, 34-10 in goals, 27-6 in assists, 3-13 yellow cards, 142-33 corner kicks.

So why is it that their shot percentage (goals/shots) is basically the same as their opponent? .099 vs .092
and their shots-on-goal pct (SOG/shots) is virtually identical?  .368 vs .367

I would expect a significantly better team to have at least a somewhat better percentage of their shots going into the goal, perhaps due to better shooting technique or better position at the time of the shot.  To me these numbers suggest Stanford's sole advantage is getting the ball close enough to the goal to shoot more often, but not really getting better shots (just more often getting the same quality of chances).  (That advantage is of course a mixture of Stanford offense getting the ball into position, plus Stanford defense keeping the opponent away from such a position, plus Stanford offense keeping the ball out of the opponent's possession.)


Another statistic that jumps out at me is that Stanford has 142 (7.9/gm) corner kicks to their opponents' 33 (1.8/gm) But goals scored off corner kicks seem fewer than I expect.  Reviewing the games play-by-play, I found just 3 Stanford goals immediately on a corner kick plus two more within a minute.  Their opponents scored one immediately on a corner kick plus two more within a minute.

[M T]

I didn't grow up playing or even watching soccer and am recently enjoying the Stanford teams, so I'm not familiar with the subtleties, but some things seem odd to me.

The Stanford women seem to be significantly better than their opponents.  16-2 in games, 345-109 in shots, 34-10 in goals, 27-6 in assists, 3-13 yellow cards, 142-33 corner kicks.

So why is it that their shot percentage (goals/shots) is basically the same as their opponent? .099 vs .092
and their shots-on-goal pct (SOG/shots) is virtually identical?  .368 vs .367

I would expect a significantly better team to have at least a somewhat better percentage of their shots going into the goal, perhaps due to better shooting technique or better position at the time of the shot.  To me these numbers suggest Stanford's sole advantage is getting the ball close enough to the goal to shoot more often, but not really getting better shots (just more often getting the same quality of chances).  (That advantage is of course a mixture of Stanford offense getting the ball into position, plus Stanford defense keeping the opponent away from such a position, plus Stanford offense keeping the ball out of the opponent's possession.)


Another statistic that jumps out at me is that Stanford has 142 (7.9/gm) corner kicks to their opponents' 33 (1.8/gm) But goals scored off corner kicks seem fewer than I expect.  Reviewing the games play-by-play, I found just 3 Stanford goals immediately on a corner kick plus two more within a minute.  Their opponents scored one immediately on a corner kick plus two more within a minute.