2012 PACE Stats (Plus a Comparison to the 2013 Season)

Here are the PACE stats for the 2011-2012 season:

Top Five Total PPM:

5. DePaul .124

4. Western Illinois .135

3. Wisconsin-Platteville .147

2. Maryland .168

1. Nebraska .205

Top Five OPPM:

4(t). Western Kentucky .068

4(t). Michigan State .068

3. James Madison .074

2. Grand Valley .080

1. Maryland .092

Top Five DPPM:

5. Ohio State .033

4. Kentucky .028

3. Saginaw Valley .023

2. Central Michigan .022

1. Grand Valley .016

NET Rating:

20. Towson -.174

19. Nebraska -.155

18. Northwestern State -.104

17. Wisconsin-Platteville -.08

16. Western Illinois -.065

15. Louisville -.060

14. Bowling Green -.031

12(t). Miami -.022

12(t). DePaul -.022

11. Moody -.020

10. Maryland .016

9. Kent State .021

8. Ohio State .026

6(t). Kentucky .027

6(t). Michigan State .027

5. Western Kentucky .028

3(t). Saginaw Valley .035

3(t). James Madison .035

2. Central Michigan .038

1. Grand Valley .064

NOTES ON PACE

• Grand Valley was the best statistical team this season by a healthy margin. Only four losses (by a combined five points) and multiple blowouts (5-0 over SV, 8-1 over Kent, 7-1 over MSU are a few examples) helped their causes significantly.
• Grand Valley was actually .001 points better in 2012 than in 2013, despite twice as many losses.
• CMU was the second ranked team, coming off a season where they won a National Championship. However, they were the 7th seed at Nationals, due to a lack of games played in 2012. If they would have played more games (especially against non-Michigan foes) they probably would have topped this list. Against non-Michigan opponents, CMU was 4-0 with a 19-2 margin, including wins over teams #5 and #9 on this list.
• Saginaw and JMU tied for #3. SV won the National Championship this season and JMU only reached the Quarterfinals. So what was the difference between these two teams? JMU scored a LOT of PPG, SVSU had the third lowest total points per match of any team in the NCDA. James Madison scored nearly .02 points per minute more than SV! But Saginaw did an excellent job of holding off their opponents (.023 DPPM compared to JMU’s .074.) Part of this is due to the fact that JMU played mostly East Coast schools in their first season, leading to higher scoring games and SV played a lot of beat-em-up Michigan games.
• WKU is the surprise #5 seed. In my opinion, this is due to the fact that they mauled Louisville twice and held all of the rest of their opponents to close games.
• Michigan State and Kentucky are in similar situations to SV and JMU. Michigan State was eliminated early on in the tournament, UK made it to the title game. MSU had a bunch of offensive explosion games (including a 14-0 win over Nebraska) and UK played excellent defense.
• The other result that surprised me was Kent being #9. They were the #1 seed at Nationals, but statistically they took a couple bad losses and rarely blew anyone out.

Teams that improved statistically in 2013

• UK, MSU, Kent, JMU, UWP, TU, NSULA

Teams that regressed statistically in 2013

• GVSU, CMU, SVSU, OSU, WKU, MU, BGSU, MAD, DPU, UMD, UNL

Just because a team regressed statistically does NOT mean they were a worse team, just statistically scored less/allowed more points in a given season.