ESPN Passport: The Games I Have Attended

Anyone who knows me knows that I love stats. One of the more underrated sports related stats website has to be ESPN Passport. It is an awesome service provided by ESPN that allows you to archive all the sports events you have been to (and even watched from home) and spews out stats about how the teams have done in those games. They show a win-loss record, active winning or losing streak and how the teams have done at home and on the road in the games you saw them play. Over time, they have added medals which you can earn if you attend events and the team goes on a winning or even a losing streak.

Full link to all the stats available here on Google Drive.

Here’s a look at some of the stats for my events: (Note: I only log the games that I have attended in person)

I am certain that I missed a couple of games that I attended in person but of the 38 games I have logged in so far, there are 10 teams that I have never seen lose (3 of them I have seen on more than one occasion):

New York Mets: 3-0, 2 games at Citi Field (vs. Yankees and Chicago White Sox) and one at Rogers Center
Seattle Mariners: 2-0 (both in the same stadium but once when it was SkyDome and one as Rogers Center)
West Virginia Mountaineers (CFB): 2-0 (both at High Point Solutions Stadium)

The following teams are 1-0: Houston Astros, Cincinnati Bearcats (CFB), Fresno State Bulldogs (CFB), Buffalo Sabers, San José Sharks, Miami Heat and Syracuse Orangeman (CBB).

The most frequent teams that I have seen are by far the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees:

Toronto Blue Jays: 6-9 record, 5-7 at home and 1-2 on the road (all road games at Yankee Stadium)
New York Yankees: 8-5 record, 5-3 at home and 3-2 on the road (all road games at Rogers Center)

List of Arenas with record of home team in brackets:
SkyDome/Rogers Center (5-7)
Old/New Yankee Stadium (5-3)
High Point Solutions Stadium (3-4)
Citi Field (2-0)
Izod Center (2-1)
Madison Square Garden (1-1)
Air Canada Center (0-1)
Rutgers Athletic Center (0-1)
TD Garden (0-1)
Citizens Bank Ballpark (0-1)

Stats by Sport:
Major League Baseball: 23 games
NCAA DI Football: 7 games
National Hockey League: 4 games
National Basketball Association: 3 games
NCAA DI Basketball: 1 game

Finishing off with the medals page, I have six in total which include easy ones like checking into your first event, posting comments and attending a game on a holiday. However two cool ones that I have is “Zero Hero” which is attending a game with a shutout (I just got at the Mets/White Sox game) and “Doubleheader” which is attending two games in one day. I got that one on October 27, 2007 by watching a college football game between Rutgers Scarlet Knights and West Virginia playing a game at noon and then heading over to Madison Square Garden to see the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers play at 7pm.

 

2010-11 Stevens Athletics Calendar

For anyone interested in the Stevens Athletics’ calendar, I have created an unofficial once again this fall. The fall sports include Equestrian, Field Hockey, Men’s Golf, Men/Women Soccer, Men/Women Cross-Country, Women’s Tennis and Women’s Volleyball. As more schedules get released, I hope to keep updating this calendar so even if you add it now, you’ll get all the updated scheduled into your calendar automatically. If you are interested, I have embedded the calendar below and given the link if you would like to add it to your calendar as well. For those only interested in specific sports, I will also attach individual sport calendars and you can pick and choose.

Here is also the iCal and HTML link to the calendar:

If anyone needs instructions on how to import these calendars into your own, feel free to ask.

Here are the individual calendars by sport which are in .csv and are formatted to be simply imported into your calendar. I would recommend right clicking on each link to save the specific ones you want and then individually import them to your calendar. You can also just click the link to open up the calendar for viewing purposes.

Equestrian

Field Hockey

Men’s Golf

Men’s Soccer

Men’s Cross Country

Women’s Soccer

Women’s Tennis

Women’s Volleyball

Women’s Cross Country

Pigott Falls Short Of Incredible NCAA Record

By being held scoreless in today’s game against Ithaca College, Stevens Women’s Lacrosse captain Alyssa Pigott has fallen just short of a remarkable NCAA streak that started way back on March 3rd of 2007. I have been told by our Athletics Department that the NCAA record stands at 68 games even though the record I found was Amy Appelt from the University of Virginia (according to NCAA Women’s D1 Records: Lacrosse) who scored a goal for her squad in 66 consecutive games. Appelt set the record over the course of her four years at Virginia from Feb. 27, 2002 to March 13, 2005 and ended up scoring 83 goals in her 85 career games at Virginia. Pigott’s streak snapped in her 68th collegiate game, just one game short of tying the all-time NCAA mark. She did however set the Division III mark, beating the record of Scranton’s Liz Baumbach who scored in 45 straight from March 28, 2001 to May 10, 2003. (NCAA Women’s D3 Records: Lacrosse)

Alyssa, who had scored a goal in every single game of her career until today, has scored 222 goals and remarkably has scored 6 goals (4 times) in a game as many times as she has been held to just one. Not surprisingly, a very balanced scorer both at home and on the road, she has averaged 3.26 goals per game in 31 home games while averaging 0.01 goals more in 37 games away from Hoboken. While amassing a 50-18 record since her freshman year, she has also averaged 3.46 in matches her squad has won as opposed to just 2.72 in losses. As if all those numbers were not enough, it is remarkable that she had scored a goal in every single game of her collegiate career up until the one earlier today in Ithaca, New York.

Usually I don’t write about an individual student-athlete setting some record but I thought this one deserves some attention. I had initially found out about the record a couple of weeks ago but due to a superstitious nature of a couple people, decided to hold off posting about it until she had at least tied the record. It also gave me some time to look up and calculate a couple of these stats so I guess it worked out in the end.

Alyssa and her Ducks went undefeated on a Spring Break road trip in Texas earlier this season by defeating Bowdoin College and SUNY Oswego before coming home and dropping a tough one against #6 Colby College in another competitive battle between two ranked teams. I talked with Coach Celine Cunningham earlier in the season on Coach’s Corner where she spoke of the high goals that this squad has said and we saw it by the continued display of excellence on the field with a thrilling triple overtime win against #8 ranked Union College early on in the season.

There was also a piece in Lacrosse Magazine in early March titled “Pigott Ready To Speak Up For Ducks” where they discuss the develop of Pigott not only as a player but as a leader and you can see that success has translated to wins against ranked opponents as opposed to the first year or two. With overall records of 12-8, 14-6, and 16-2 the past three season and 3-4 against ranked opponents (3-1 in their last 4 outings), you can see the dramatic improvement for the Ducks in the last 4 years.

Officially from Stevens, Alyssa was credited with goal number 200 in the win against Union College but my numbers only had her at 198 goals through the three games this season even with through using the ‘official’ statistics from Stevens Athletics. Breaking down her data year by year, she is credited with 53, 67, and 73 goals in her three full seasons and 30 so far this year which puts her up to 222. I only counted 52 goals her freshman year but that is an argument for a different day.

Once again, congratulations to Alyssa Pigott on a remarkable individual run, setting the D-III record and continued success to her and the rest of the squad the remainder of the season.

Feel free to check out statistics and game recaps from each of her games through out here career: 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 available via StevensDucks.com or follow Stevens Athletics on twitter @StevensDucks.

Bracket Update: Round 1

Through day 2 of this March Madness, I still have a couple of brackets which are doing pretty well. I have different brackets on ESPN, Yahoo! Sports and Facebook. I’ll break each one down but the best of the 3 is a tie with ESPN and Yahoo! Sports both having 26/32 correct picks and then Facebook only one game behind at 25/32 but that might be the one in the best shape.

A couple of things to note before my review:

  • With round one now complete … the ESPN.com Tournament Challenge looks like this:
  • Approximately 4.8 million completed brackets were submitted.
  • There are no brackets that are completely correct.
  • There are 3 brackets that have missed only one game.
  • There are 95 brackets that have missed two games.
  • There are 1,111 brackets that have missed three games.
  • Most brackets, on average, have missed 10 games.

    Click ‘Read more‘ to read the rest of review of my brackets. Continue reading “Bracket Update: Round 1”

March Madness Historical Data

Before you go out and blindly fill out your bracket, here are some historical information on the seeds and how well they have performed.

First of all, I can’t stand people who fill out brackets and you have all four #1 seeds in your Final Four. People got lucky when all four of them did make it to the Final 4 two years ago as that had never happened in history before. As a matter of fact, 3 #1 seeds have made it to the Final 4 only three other times since 1979 (1993, 1997 and 1999).

Be careful on making bold predictions for teams making a long run though. Everyone knows a 16-seed has yet to win a game in the tournament but be on the lookout for Lehigh and Vermont teams giving Kansas and Syracuse some trouble before bowing out. I am hopeful that the 1/16 upset happens this year (sans the Duke game) but you never know. Did you know no 14 or 15 seed has won a game in the tournament in the past 3 years, and they have won a combined 3 games in the past decade? You should be comfortable in advancing all the top three seeds without much hesitation.

Teams seeded 13th or lower in the NCAA tournament have been first-round “giant killers” 41 times since the field was expanded to 64 teams. Of those surprises, 30 have been decided by fewer than 6 points or in overtime. So if you feel confident about Siena or Murray State, go for it and take that chance.

The dreaded 5/12 upset seems to happen every year. Only twice in the past 20 years (2000 and 2007) has there not been a 12-seed advancing at least into the second round but the furthest a 12-seed has made it is the Elite 8. The only double digit seeds to make it to the Final 4 are LSU (’86) and George Mason (’06) who were both 11-seeds.

The 8/9 games are statistically a toss-up. Since 1985, the 8-seed has won 46 times but has lost 54 times but over the course of the tournament, the 8-seed is 66-99 while the 9th seed are 58-100.

When determining teams for your Final 4, you’re safe to have team that are seeded 5th or higher. In the past decade, only 3 teams seeded 6th or lower have made the Final 4 and it has only happened in 2 years (2000, 2006).

No seed ranked 9th or lower has ever won the Championship. No 5th or 7th seed has ever won a Championship but they have made it to the Title Game 3 times (1984, 2000 and 2002). Unlikely champions are a 4th seed (once – 1997), 6th seed (twice – 1983, 1988) and 8th seed (once – 1985).

Let me know who you have in your Final 4 and your eventual champions. What kind of upsets are you expecting? Do you believe that Purdue will really be that bad and lose to Siena? Which #1-seed goes down first?

My answers: expecting two 5/12 upsets a couple of 10 and 11 seeds winning. Think Purdue will keep the game close but Siena will win it in the end. First #1 seed to go down will be Kentucky because of their youth and inexperience.