Data Dump vs. North Texas (#2)

The longer the season goes on, the harder it feels to come up with original content that is interesting and of value. Some of that is our sheer consistency. We have a Jay Mims system, the players work that system. Example: in the last 10 games we’ve averaged 45.7% of the possession, the highest amount of possession we had over that stretch was 48.3% (vs. NE Revs II), the lowest 41.1% (vs Chattanooga). That difference comes to about 6.5 mins over 90, very consistent. But, I’ll try and focus on some things that are different about this week’s game. So, let’s dive in.

1) A non 1-1 draw?!

It finally happened. After six straight draws with a 1:1 scoreline, we had a 0:0 draw. This is the first nil nil draw for the club in 322 days. That’s pretty alright. The last 0:0 draw? You probably don’t remember because it was that miserable game we played at Hart Park last season. That game, vs Madison in Milwaukee, is the least interesting game in club history according to xG and the only game we’ve played with a combined xG of less than 1. Saturday night’s combined xG? 1.44.

2) The scoring draught is real (scary).

You can say what you want about the OG in AZ or the Header that Didn’t Count from The Game That Wasn’t. But those don’t count for the purposes of this bullet point. Here we are talking about a Union Omaha player putting the ball in the back of the net. This is something that I consider a mark of a functioning attack.

We have three long scoreless streaks in club history. Let’s start with the longest one as measured by the calendar. The 183 days between Evan Conway goals to end the 2020 season and start the 2021 season takes the cake, but there was only about 25 minutes of game time in between those goals.

As for in-season streaks. The previous longest streak was 20 days, (9/11 to 9/30 in 2020), but 314 minutes of game time. We lost 3 times during this streak.

Our current, and active, streak of not putting the ball in the net is going to last at least 36 days and be 373 minutes long when the game kicks off on Saturday. As mentioned above, reasonable people can disagree with my assessment of the length of this streak, but we are having a problem scoring goals either way.

We’ve scored 8 goals in the last 9 games. That is 2x as many as we scored against NE Revs II. We’ve only given up 6 goals though. Either way, I’m very anxious about this.

3) Blake Malone debuts!

We saw our fifth player start at center back this week and Mr. 5 Across the Back, Blake “Ba-Lock-A Muh-Loan” Malone did great in my opinion. Additionally, this is a very positive development because, if you had forgotten, we signed an academy player to a contract 2 days before starting him against Chattanooga last week. Let’s check some stats.

Daltyn has an edge in the air, but Blake’s effort compares quite favorably. In addition to these absolutely solid stats, I noticed in the second half, every time a North Texas player hit the deck, Blake would quietly says something directly to them as he passed over them. It did not look like he was saying nice things, I liked that.