What a game! Los Buhos got sucked into the MoneyGram Soccer Park chaos in a big way last night. I called the game a must win yesterday afternoon, but by the final whistle I was thrilled we grabbed a point. Red cards, getting late goals, giving up late goals, golazos, the drama! I can’t be the only one very relieved we are done playing the youthful agents of chaos from Dallas. While we were undoubtably quite bad in the first 50′ of the game, I’d argue we won the second half despite giving up what might go down as the sloppiest goal we give up all season. Let’s dig in starting with the centerbacks who were exposed on that play.
1) Jay seems to have two centerback archetypes.
Having a left footed left centerback is obviously important to Jay, look no further than the conversion of Jake Crull to centerback (for the sake of this argument please ignore every other reason that move made tons of sense). It’s been clear that Jake and Daltyn have been rotating through the LCB spot and Nathan Aune has been backing up Illal at RCB.
Nathan and Daltyn started at CB last night. I’ll let other pundits in the WGaH media empire debate that choice, but I felt that left or right footedness aside, Nathan played Jake’s role and Daltyn played Illal’s role. Let me explain…with data.
Daltyn made shorter passes and more accurate passes than Nathan did. Compare that to Illal and Jake from our game against Forward midweek.
I made the argument after the Tucson game that Jake is making more attacking passes than Illal hence the lower accuracy. Certainly that passed the eye test in this game with Nathan starting the attack from the back and Daltyn getting into the attack much less frequently.
2) Nathan Aune digs the long ball.
It was Nathan’s season debut yesterday and he brought something different to the game, the long ball out of the back. In the first chart in point #1 you can see that 8 of his 38 passes were long passes (defined by Opta as a pass 35 yards or longer aimed at a teammate). This is over 21% of his passes, the second highest such percentage by a centerback all year.
Compare Nathan’s chart above to the highest long pass rate of the season: Jake at home to North Texas.
Nathan’s passes look longer and more direct when you compare the charts and it seemed that way last night.
3) One chart that shows why you were unhappy.
Opta shows Clearances and Interceptions and Defensive Blocks (blocked passes) on their Chalkboard. We lost each category individually, and combine we lost the “turnover battle” 23 to 41.
At the end of the day, we escaped with a point, we remain in third, and we have a nice four game stretch ahead of us.
4) Elo rankings!
To prove my point, let’s take a look at this week’s Elo rankings. You can refresh yourself on Jon’s methodology here.
| Greenville Triumph | 1592 |
| North Texas SC | 1537 |
| Union Omaha | 1536 |
| Forward Madison | 1536 |
| Richmond Kickers | 1513 |
| Chattanooga Red Wolves | 1491 |
| FC Tucson | 1489 |
| Fort Lauderdale CDF | 1483 |
| South Georgia Tormenta | 1467 |
| New England Revs II | 1451 |
| Orlando City B | 1387 |
Five our next six games are against teams in the bottom 5 of this weeks Elo rankings. Accordingly, I’m going to spend the week optimistic about our chances for Saturday and the next month of play. I’d encourage you to do the same.
Who Gives A Hoot? 
Great blog I eenjoyed reading
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