Week 11

 

Hi all, the playoffs are well underway and have been full of surprises this year. There have been a few big upsets this year including both the number one and number two seeds in the Eastern Conference being knocked out in the first round of playoffs. These upsets did not bode well for our predictions as our models favored both of these teams to win their matches. Our model only accurately predicted the outcome for 3 out of the 8 matches in the first round. Ouch! Thankfully our model did a lot in the second round of the playoffs.

 

Our very own Phoenix Rising have pulled off a couple of big upsets in the playoffs, knocking out both the two and three seeds in the Western Conferences. They are going up against the number one-seeded Sacramento Republic this weekend. With another upset, they will move on to the Championship. Good luck Rising!

 

I was assigned the Eastern Conference, so I created a model for the Easter Conference final between the Charleston Battery and Louisville City Football Club. The model is predicting a win for Charleston 41% of the time, a victory for Louisville 31% of the time and a draw 28% of the time. Interestingly, there are no draws in the playoffs (the game would go onto extra time and eventually penalty kicks if needed) but it would likely be very difficult to account for this in a model.

 

While this has been a fun experiment, our research is ultimately looking at how travel (particularly distance and time zone differences) affects teams and trying to find a way to incorporate that into a model for our predictions. So as we continue to follow the playoffs, we are also wrapping up our data collection to move onto the next step in our research.