USL League One Ratings: Week 15

We had our lightest schedule by far since I’ve started publishing my ratings. Let’s see how much movement there was with a third of the league sitting idle this past weekend:

Rank	Team	Rating
1	Union Omaha (6-4-1)	2.127
2	Chattanooga Red Wolves (5-4-1)	1.598
3	Greenville Triumph (6-4-2)	1.346
4	Forward Madison (4-4-3)	0.647
5	Richmond Kickers (4-3-4)	0.386
6	FC Tucson (3-4-4)	0.295
7	Toronto FC II (4-4-5)	0.127
8	North Texas SC (4-2-5)	-0.007
9	New England Revolution II (5-1-6)	-0.134
10	Fort Lauderdale CF (5-2-7)	-0.229
11	North Carolina FC (1-3-6)	-0.665
12	South Georgia Tormenta (5-1-8)	-0.834

Rank Δ	Team	Result(s)	Rating Δ
10 → 8	North Texas	W 4-1 v. MAD	🔼 .349
12 → 11	North Carolina	D 0-0 @ GVL	🔼 .277
7 → 6	Tucson	D 2-2 @ CRW	🔼 .250
9 ↔	New England	W 1-0 v. TFC	🔼 .154
8 → 10	Fort Lauderdale	Idle	🔼 .016
5 ↔	Richmond	Idle	🔼 .014
1 ↔	Omaha	Idle	🔼 .001
11 → 12	Tormenta	Idle	🔽 .041
3 ↔	Greenville	D 0-0 v. NCFC	🔽 .048
2 ↔	Chattanooga	D 2-2 v. TUC	🔽 .054
6 → 7	Toronto	L 0-1 @ NE	🔽 .139
4 ↔	Madison	L 1-4 @ NTX	🔽 .443

So, poor Tormenta now has the worst rating and they didn’t even play last weekend. A draw in Greenville is an admirable result for North Carolina, and the environment was ripe for a move like this to happen. As I mentioned last week, North Carolina are not only getting more games under their belt as they catch up with the rest of the league, but the results are improving (three results in a row), and all of their losses are by single goals. By contrast, Tormenta have played in six matches decided by more than one goal, and have lost four of them. Tormenta are also struggling with a .500 record at home, and don’t have the away results to pad the gap.

We had an interesting dynamic last weekend, as for the most part the weaker teams in the league had the more favorable results. With the exception of New England beating Toronto at home 1-0, most of the favored teams had poor results. This might explain why Fort Lauderdale was idle, saw their rating increase (even if slightly), but their rating suddenly became the 10th best out of 12, compared to 8th last week. Not only did the teams around Fort Lauderdale have positive results allowing them jump them, but the teams they got those results against were too far ahead to drop down. It’s like the middle of the table kinda shifted up, and Fort Lauderdale were kinda shuffled to the back of it as a result.

The analysis above kinda matches up with what I’ve been noticing the last few weeks, that the middle is still bunching up, and unless any of those teams between 5-10 either go on a run or a drought, that tier is still going to be large and volatile. It would also likely mean an exciting run to the finish once we’re at the final third of the season, and teams are jockeying for playoff position. Do I plan to have predictions for playoff chances? Hell no I ain’t sportsclubstats.com. But I will be back next week, and every week!