Standings as of 2017-10-31

The Gonzalez System now includes 260 technical upsets in 1337 (leet) ranked matches. For the 2018 Season, we’re at 24 technical upsets in 87 ranked matches. We’ve also seen twelve JV contests, and four new schools: Midland, Southern Illinois Edwardsville, Gonzaga, and Oregon St. All the following data is current as of 2017-10-31.

If you’d like to know more about the Gonzalez System, please refer to our Spec Doc detailing the system. And as always, I’d be more than happy to answer any questions. 

Technical Upset Spotlight

As a particular consequence of four schools making their induction matches this weekend, we saw 7 technical upsets in our 12 ranked matches played this weekend. A technical upset occurs when a lower rated team defeats a higher rated team.

UNL def Midland 6-1

Our largest upset of the day belongs to an Induction Match. Historically, only six teams have won their Induction Matches out of the 45 schools that have played, and it’s often the case that the established team is below the mean (~40), creating a better chance of an technical upset occurring. This match is the third highest technical upset of any induction match, ranking #62 of 260 technical upsets, in the 76th percentile. UNL gained a slight boost because of Midland’s +1 home court advantage.

SU def UVA 5-0

Stevenson’s second program win in history was their first win in regulation, and they exchanged a hearty 1.350. SU’s rating gap was 3.503 over UVA. It ranks #83 of 260, in the 68.08th percentile.

DePaul def SIUE 3-1

Narrowly less than SU/UVA, this exchange was can be rounded to 1.350. Due to the use of floating point of our Google Sheets, the 1.350 value is rounded from approximately [1.349 794 163 718 94] (If you want to get technical.) It ranks #84 of 260, in the 67.69th percentile. This is the third largest upset for DePaul in a Induction Match out of four… maybe it’s a DePaul strategy to nab an extra bit of rating.

SU def UMD 3-2 OT

The first program win for Stevenson was an Overtime upset exchanging 0.660 after the Rating Exchange was halved, and the 19th greatest overtime upset in the records. In terms of comparing all technical upsets, this one ranks #92 of 260 in the 64th percentile.

UMD def UVA 3-2 OT

The second time these two have gone to Overtime in the past eight months, and this time UMD gets the win. It ranks 25th of Overtime Upsets. exchanging 0.611. Overall, it ranks #127 of 260 technical upsets, in the 51st percentile.

ZAG def OS 5-3

After their earlier win, visitor Oregon State dropped the next game and gave a minor technical upset win to home court Gonzaga. We’ll still need to see a few more games from both teams (ideally 6), before we can be confident. Until then we’ll see more minor technical upsets occur. This was #182 of 260, in the 30th percentile.

OS def ZAG 8-4

In this Induction Match, visiting team Oregon State got the win on host, Gonzaga. Gonzaga received a slight +1 boost for Home Court Advantage, which caused this match to be a Technical Upset. This kind of match has occurred three times, and this minor technical upset is tied for 197th of 260 technical upsets, in the 24th percentile.

Net Rating Changes

Rating Changes Pre Post Change
SU 34.659 36.660 2.001
UNL 36.702 38.132 1.430
DePaul 36.711 37.852 1.141
UWP 43.626 44.216 0.590
Towson 46.456 46.698 0.242
ZAG 40.000 40.020 0.020
OS 40.000 39.980 -0.020
UMD 37.866 37.803 -0.063
Midland 40.000 38.570 -1.430
SIUE 40.000 38.269 -1.731
UVA 39.643 37.463 -2.180

Stevenson’s two victories net them the largest rating boost of the weekend which is solid for posting a 2-1 record. UVA’s 0-3 record net them the largest rating loss.

Towson’s 3-0 record only netted them a tiny .242 which won’t make huge waves in their tier of the Standings. While that tier is competitive, rating gaps are still larger than the lower tiers and often a team needs to make a win against a quality opponent to jump places. Defeating the much lower rated SU and UMD only gave the home court Towson .010 and .013 in tiny Rating Exchanges.

Highly predictable outcomes don’t tend to affect the Standings that much, but on the plus side, we’ve only seen the minimum Rating Exchange (0.010) applied eleven times this season (overall, minimum exchanges have been applied to 216 of 1337 matches). General progress in League parity. The League Rating Spread is 21.810 from top to bottom.

Gonzaga was the most successful new school of the weekend, netting a small +0.020 in their two games, but there are plenty of matches to go for all these four teams. Good luck to all our new schools!

Ratings, sorted.

Mov. Rank Rating Team
1 54.835 CMU
2 52.666 GVSU
3 48.618 JMU
4 47.682 Kent
5 47.024 BGSU
6 46.747 SVSU
7 46.698 Towson
8 46.269 UK
9 44.523 MSU
10 44.216 UWP
11 41.525 PSU
12 40.687 Ohio
13 40.649 VCU
14 40.502 UNT
15 40.139 WKU
→ Enter 16 40.020* ZAG
→ Enter 17 39.980* OS
16 39.819 OSU
↓ from 18 19 39.165 UNG
↓ from 19 20 38.586* UWW
→ Enter 21 38.570* Midland
↓ from 20 22 38.557* NIU
→ Enter 23 38.269* SIUE
↑ from 27 24 38.132 UNL
↓ from 21 25 37.909 CSU
↓ from 22 26 37.885* MC
↓ from 26 27 37.852 DePaul
↓ from 23 28 37.803 UMD
↓ from 24 29 37.796 Akron
↓ from 25 30 37.722* Pitt
↓ from 17 31 37.463 UVA
↓ from 30 32 36.660 SU
↓ from 28 33 36.169 NSU
↓ from 29 34 35.442 GSU
↓ from 31 35 34.449 BW
↓ from 32 36 33.025 Miami

Movement as of 2017-10-24
* denotes a provisional rating (< 6 matches)

It’s so rare that I get to use the “→” arrow so frequently. Welcome to our four new schools.

Provisional Ratings

Also, now that we have a couple events into the season (couple as in 15!) you will begin to see the * next to any team’s rating, in which the noted team has not played six games in their overall history (not just this season).

As a result of its adaptive nature, the Gonzalez System is much more accurate when a team has more than a handful of games under their belt. Six matches is about what it takes to make a solid evaluation of a team’s Gonzalez Rating. In that amount of games, a middle Rating can generally rise to the top three or fall to the bottom three. In terms of the average event we have around the League, six matches is generally two or three events over the course of the season.

It’s also influential of our policy regarding the three game minimum required for Nationals participation. Three regular season games, plus three double strength games in the round robin of Nationals, equals nine “games” that impact a team’s rating for that Season. Since we use the Gonzalez System to help determine the seeds of the Nationals Bracket, that procedure will give us at least “nine” matches to accurately place a team into their appropriate seed. A more accurate Rating leads to a fairer Nationals Tournament Bracket for all.

(Mostly) Complete History of Inducting Matches

Record keeping for Seasons 2005 through 2010 is incomplete enough that we can’t use them for ranking purposes, but the data we have listed is mostly accurate. Games within an event might not be chronological like they are today, but we can pin down almost every school’s Induction Match date in the stone age records.

Inducting School in Bold!

  1. 2005-04-09: Founding: DePaul, Nationals 2005
  2. 2005-04-09: Founding: Kent, Nationals 2005
  3. 2005-04-09: Founding: OSU, Nationals 2005
  4. 2005-04-09: Founding: MSU, Nationals 2005
  5. 2005-04-09: Founding: DCC, Nationals 2005
  6. 2005-12-03: GVSU def DCC 10-0, Inducting Match
  7. 2006-02-18: DCC def OUMI 8-3, Match
  8. 2006-02-18: OSU def UK 16-3, Ohio State Invitational
  9. 2006-03-26: DePaul def K-State 4-1 or K-State def MSU 2-1, Chicago Dodgeball Open (*could have played DePaul, MSU, or UK first)
  10. 2007-04-14: MSU def BGSU, Nationals 2007 (*could have played prior to Nationals, but we think MSU was their Inducting Match opponent at Nationals.)
  11. 2007-01-27: OSU def Marshall, OSU Round Robin (*When IDs were assigned, we did not officially whether Marshall or BG played first. Marshall for sure played 2007-01-27, but BGSU’s exact date is in doubt, looking to be in April.)
  12. 2007-09-22: GVSU def SVSU 8-0, Battle of the Valleys
  13. 2007-11-10: Marshall def WKU 3-1, Kentucky Classic
  14. 2008-02-03: CMU, Michigan Dodgeball Cup (*could have played SV, DCC, or MSU first; only CMU listed game: GVSU def CMU 13-0)
  15. 2008-04-12: UWP, Nationals 2008 (*only have Day 2 listed, GV def UWP 9-0. Could have played MSU, DePaul, BG, DCC, SV, OSU. Also could have played in the fabled DePaul Triad Invitational in which we have no records.)
  16. 2008-10-26: WKU def UofL 7-1, Inducting Match
  17. 2008-12-06: SVSU def HFCC 16-0, Inducting Match
  18. 2009-03-21: WKU def Miami 8-1, Inducting Match
  19. 2010-02-13: WKU def NSU 4-1, St Jude Tournament
  20. 2010-04-10: WIU def Kent 4-2, Nationals 2010
  21. 2010-11-05: Kent def EMU 3-0, Inducting Match
  22. 2011-01-30: MSU def MAD 8-0, Chicago Dodgeball Open
  23. 2011-02-12: SVSU def LCC 7-0, Michigan Dodgeball Cup
  24. 2011-02-12: K-State def UNL 10-0, Match
  25. 2011-11-13: Kent def JMU 4-2, Round Robin
  26. 2011-11-13: Kent def Towson 7-1, Round Robin
  27. 2011-11-13: Kent def UMD 5-2, Round Robin
  28. 2012-03-31: Kent def RIT 4-1, Ohio Dodgeball Cup
  29. 2012-10-21: JMU def VCU 9-2, UMD Tournament
  30. 2013-03-23: UNT def NSU 4-2, Inducting Match
  31. 2013-04-12: UK def PSU 9-0, Nationals 2013: Friday
  32. 2013-10-20: DePaul def SAU 6-1, Midwest Mayhem
  33. 2013-10-20: GVSU def SHU 11-0, GVSU Invite
  34. 2013-10-20: BGSU def DU 7-1, GVSU Invite
  35. 2014-11-09: Kent def Akron 8-0, Buckeye Invite
  36. 2014-11-15: PSU def SU 7-0, Maryland Invite
  37. 2015-03-21: Akron def BW 4-1, Ohio Dodgeball Cup
  38. 2015-09-27: BW def Ohio 7-0, BGSU Invitational
  39. 2016-02-28: VCU def UVA 7-0, BEAST V
  40. 2016-10-01: Akron def Pitt 5-1, Party on Fifth Ave
  41. 2016-10-16: DePaul def NIU 8-2, DePaul University Invite
  42. 2016-11-05: UNG def GSU 9-0, Georgian Civil War (Dual Induction)
  43. 2016-11-05: UNG def GSU 9-0, Georgian Civil War (Repeat)
  44. 2016-12-04: DePaul def UWW 3-0, Whitewater Winter Basher
  45. 2017-02-25: CSU def MC 5-0, Ohio Dodgeball Cup (Dual Induction)
  46. 2017-02-25: CSU def MC 5-0, Ohio Dodgeball Cup (Repeat)
  47. 2017-10-28: UNL def Midland 6-1, Induction Match
  48. 2017-10-28: DePaul def SIUE 3-1, Platteville Supertastic
  49. 2017-10-28: OS def ZAG 8-4, Induction Match (Dual Induction)
  50. 2017-10-28: OS def ZAG 8-4, Induction Match (Repeat)

Setting aside our Founding Members, that’s just 6 schools in 45 that won their Inducting Matches, and three of those were dual induction matches.

Since 2010-09-25 we have 27 Inducting Matches in the reliable records: 14 have been technical upsets (won by the lower Gonzalez Rating), 12 were won by the higher Gonzalez rating (as predicted), and just one has been played on neutral court by teams in their first match (CSU def MC at the 2017 ODC).

A statistical quirk

The last 11 Inducting Matches (#36-50) have been technical upsets, not including the completely neutral #45/46 dual induction match. This is mostly because as the League has grown, so has the League Rating Spread. By the nature of average, about half the team ratings will fall below the initial rating given to a new team. This increases the chances that an established team, who is rated below the average, will play a new team that will be rated higher. But since new teams rarely win their induction matches when playing an established team, it’s a quirk when understanding technical upsets across the system.

  • Initial Rating = set as 40.000
  • League Mean Rating: 40.946
  • League Median Rating: 39.492

It’s sort of a question as to what we do in entering new teams into the Gonzalez System. Giving all teams the same initial 40.000 rating, whenever they enter the League, seems like the fairest thing to do and has worked so far. The Initial Rating is slightly lower than the Mean because of League Expansion and Home Court Advantage, but it is also coupled with a myriad more factors that will affect a team being seeded into the Nationals Bracket. We end up with a pretty fair seeding representation. It may result in a large number of Induction Matches being classed as technical upsets, but it’s all part of the adaptive nature of the system.

No Induction Matches have fallen outside two deviations from the mean normalized exchange, which could be a signal that this theoretical induction match was really worth looking into. That would mean it was:

  • in the top 12 of our 260 technical upsets
  • greater than the 95th percentile of ranked upsets
  • a normalized exchange greater than 1.689
  • a rating gap greater than 6.889 (33.111 def 40.000)

Only two Induction Match upsets have been fallen outside the statistically significant one deviation from the mean normalized exchange. These two matches were:

  • in the top 48 of our 260 technical upsets (#22 and #27)
  • greater than the 81st percentile of ranked upsets (91% and 89%)
  • a normalized exchange greater than 1.479
  • a rating gap greater than 4.788 (35.212 def 40.000)

DePaul (35.311) def SAU (41.000) 6-1, exchanging 1.569 (Gap 5.689)
VCU (34.551) def UVA (40.000) 7-0, exchanging 1.545 (Gap 5.449)

For now, we haven’t seen a technical upset that was truly statistically significant based on standard deviations. The Gonzalez System has built in max/min exchanges so it is partially protected from any one match swaying the system too much.

Most schools to join in one day

The general record of the most teams to join in a single day is Nationals 2005 where the five founding Member Teams (DePaul, Kent, OSU, MSU, and Delta) participated in the first Nationals (then referred to as the Spartan Dodgeball Invite). That general record has stood, but the closest we’ve come in the modern record keeping era was the East Coast expansion of 2011-11-13 (the 2012 Season) with three teams joining in one day, at one event hosted by UMD.

Those three teams are healthy, but the next three teams to join the NCDA on the same day did not fair as well. St Ambrose, Davenport, and Siena Heights all joined on 2013-10-20 but are now either inactive or defunct. St Ambrose hosted UWP/DePaul for their Induction Matches at Midwest Mayhem, but it was the only two matches they ever played. Davenport and Siena played a bit more matches after playing their Induction Matches against other teams at the GVSU Invite. Siena was only active for the 2014 Season (going 3-7) and Davenport was only able to play 6 matches over 2014 and 2015, including 1 forfeit win.

The 2017 Season saw a seven teams join, and two of those teams played each other for their Induction Match. UNG traveled to GSU to face each other in the first ever dual induction match, the double header Georgian Civil War on 2016-11-05. After the New Year, CSU and MC would play in the first dual Induction Match to be played on a neutral court in which neither team had home court advantage, at the Ohio Dodgeball Cup on 2017-02-25.

That brings us to this past Saturday, where four schools joined the NCDA in one day but did it at three separate events. It was still a big day for the teams of the great expansive West, that being the Northwest Region and Midway Conference. Once again, we saw the second ever double header induction match, this time Oregon State traveling to Gonzaga. Platteville hosted DePaul and Southern Illinois Edwardsville , while Midland hosted UNL for their induction.

The same event record stands for the East Coast, but the Western teams nab the most schools in one day.

The most important part is that these four new teams, as well as the seven that joined us last Season, stick around to play some of the best dodgeball in the world. More dodgeball over less dodgeball. It’s all good. Everybody love everybody.


Please keep in mind that there is a Exec Board vote scheduled on the NCDA Ranking Algorithm; so the Gonzalez system as it appears before you today may or may not be the single system we use for Nationals 2018 at VCU. We’ll release information on the vote as soon as it comes up.

Author: Zigmister

DePaul Dodgeball #68 & NCDA Director of Officiating

2 thoughts on “Standings as of 2017-10-31”

  1. That was a fun read, thanks for putting that together. In the case of the CSU/MC dual inducting match on a neutral court, what was the exchange for the victor (CSU)? If both schools have a rating of 40.000 and there is no HCA, what is to be exchanged?

    1. Exactly 1 point. CSU was 41.000 and MC was 39.000.

      At the base formula, a predicted exchange will range from 0.010 (our minimum) to 1.000, and an upset exchange will range from 1.000 to 2.000 (our max). The closer the rating gap between two teams to zero, the closer the exchange will be to 1.000, and a signaler that the match is even between the two competitors.

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