Diaries

A home game is now in the books as Michigan downed the IPFW Mastodons for a three game series sweep. Michigan brought the offense, collecting 47 hits for 30 runs. IPFW was the bad team that was expected, and our players didn't disappoint, at least on offense. Pitching had some less than stellar moments, but in the end, the guys that got into trouble kept the losses to a minimum.

Game by game review, series thoughts, and a look at Tuesday's Eastern Michigan game follow:

Having spent the better part of the afternoon getting my 20 points so I could post this, I'd like to introduce my self to the MGoBlog community.

I am MGoData, a senior undergraduate at Michigan majoring in various technical fields. I am very interested in data and its ability to shed light on human behavior. Before embarking on a 5-6 year tour of PhD studies, I plan to take some time this summer to relax and do some "fun" projects. Given the emphasis this community places on actual facts and numbers over other more subjective metrics, I thought this would be a good place to look for a project or a two.
Jumping right into it then...

Given the success (luck?) Michigan State has had over the last few seasons, there has been a reasonable amount of discussion over Little Brother's "obsession" with everything Michigan. So I ask the question:

Is Michigan State obsessed with Michigan and if so, how can we quantify it?

To answer this question we need some data. We want this data to reasonably capture behaviors associated with constantly thinking about or wanting information on Michigan and we want there to some way to identify this behavior as being directed from Michigan State fans/students towards Michigan fans/students.

Google is a great place to start. People search google for millions of things, millions of times per day, and they search for things they are interested in. Google has had recent success predicting flu outbreaks 2 weeks ahead of the CDC, just be looking for places where people are searching for things like "flu symptoms".

Conveniently, Google has build a tool for called Google Trends with which you can compare the popularity of search terms, including where most searches are coming from. So what happens when we compare people searching for the "University of Michigan" to the people searching for "Michigan State University". Lets look at the data.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=University+of+michigan%2C+Michigan+State+University

The most immediate thing to notice is the obvious fact that more people are searching for The University of Michigan than Michigan State University. Sadly, it appears that "University of Michigan" is becoming less and less popular over the last few years.



This isnt surprising given the national (and world) recognition that Michigan recieves. Google scales this data as follows:

In relative mode, the data is scaled to the average search traffic for your term (represented as1.0) during the time period you’ve selected. For example, if you entered the term dogs, the graph you’d see would be scaled to the average of all search traffic for dogs from January 2004 to present. But if you chose a specific time frame – say 2006 – the data would then appear relative to the average of all search traffic for dogs in 2006. Then, let’s suppose that you notice a spike in the graph to 3.5; this spike means that traffic is 3.5 times the average for 2006.

Now lets look at the other information Google gives us. Conviently, we also get information on geographic regions that are searching for these two topics. The top cities break down as follows:



Again we look to Google's FAQ to understand how these results are calculated and interpreted.

To rank the top regions, cities, or languages, Google Trends first looks at a sample of all Google searches to determine the areas or languages from which we received the most searches for your first term. Then, for those top cities, Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city.

It's possible that Google uses the IP address of the searcher to tailor results to the geographic location of the user, but others can test this by performing the same Trends search and seeing what you get.

Interpreting these results is a little bit tricky so bear with me. First thing to notice is that everything is scaled to the number of relative search popularity of "University of Michigan" in Ann Arbor. Essentially they use the percentage of all Ann Arbor Google searches that are for "University of Michigan" as a baseline and compare everything else to this number. Again though, the search popularity is scaled by the total searches coming from Ann Arbor so population of other cities does not skew results. If they didn't do it this way, places like New York City would always be on top just because there are so many people Googling for everything.

What are some qualitative things we can learn just from the bar graph. Well first of all, people in Ann Arbor are searching for "University of Michigan" way more than people everywhere else, and people in East Lansing are searching for "Michigan State University" more than any place else. Furthermore, it seems that people in East Lansing are searching for "University of Michigan" more than people in Ann Arbor are searching for "Michigan State University". We can see this by comparing the the Blue Bar next to East Lansing, to the Red Bar next to Ann Arbor.

Even better, though, is the fact that Google will actually let you download text files with actual numbers. The following table are Google's measure for search popularity coming out these top cities. Again notice that Ann Arbor searching for "University of Michigan" is the baseline at 1.000. 

City	university of michigan	university of michigan (std error)	michigan state university	michigan state university (std error)
Ann Arbor (USA)	1	0%	0.1	3%
Ypsilanti (USA)	0.5	2%	0.125	5%
Birmingham (USA)	0.375	3%	0.15	3%
East Lansing (USA)	0.27	2%	0.52	2%
Southfield (USA)	0.215	2%	0.075	3%
Lansing (USA)	0.215	3%	0.29	2%
Bay City (USA)	0.175	2%	0.09	3%
Detroit (USA)	0.155	2%	0.095	3%
Kalamazoo (USA)	0.135	3%	0.09	3%
Troy (USA)	0.13	3%	0.07	3%

From these numbers we can see that "Michigan state University" is about ten times less popular than "University of Michigan" in Ann Arbor (not surprising) where as East Lansing is searching for "University of Michigan" a little more than a quarter as much as Ann Arbor is. Comparing the search popularity of opposing universities in each town, we see that East Lansing is searching for "University of Michigan" a whole 2.7X as much as Ann Arbor is searching for "Michigan State University". Furthermore search popularity of "Michigan State University" in East Lansing is about half that of "University of Michigan" in Ann Arbor, so maybe they just don't like searching for themselves (its no fun reading more "SPARTY NOOO!" articles). 

Finally some disclaimers about this analysis. The entire arguement hinges on the assumption that people's search behavior reflect something about things they are interested in and particularly something they are obsessing over. This is probably a long shot conclusion. Even if we accept that people might Google things they are obsessed with, there is no gaurentee that the search trends for people obsessing won't be washed out by the everyday searches of people who just need information. The fact is we have no idea WHY these people are searching for things, just that they are. Finally, there are probably tons of demographic differences between East Lansing and Ann Arbor that make these numbers really difficult to compare. If, for example, students make up a larger portion of the population if one city, it will skew the data because students use Google in a much different way than other demographics.

However, if you buy that people's search behavior is a reasonable proxy for things they are thinking about a lot, and that the demographic breakdown of two communities, largely driven by students and tech-savy individuals, is similar, then these results are kind of need. We can basically see that people in East Lansing are trying to get info on The Univerity of Michigan nearly 3 times as much as Ann Arbor is trying to find out whats going on in East Lansing. I assume Brain keeps info on who is visiting his site and from where so it might be possible to look at just people trying to get information on Michigan sports.

This is the first of many small projects I'd be interested in doing over the summer. If anyone has questions, comments, or ideas for the future, leave them in the comments.

MGoData.

**DISCLAIMER**
I should probably have post more about this in anticipation of the argument that doing this research is proof of obsession or whatever.  My answer to this is mainly in two parts.  First of all I am an out-of-state student so I don't have the complicated relationship with State that most people do.  I dont have friends or family there and I dont plan on getting a job in Michigan so I wont have to deal with co-workers.

My main point in this is that there are interesting ways to try to test some of the very subjective debates that go on in these parts.  Plus I just plain find it interesting that you can attempt to make sociological claims from behavioral data being generated and made available these days.

Michigan (9-9)		vs		IPFW (2-17)
Friday 3:05pm, Ray Fisher Stadium
Alan Oaks (2-3, 2.67 ERA)		vs		TBA
Stats	Audio
Notes: Michigan is 5-0 all time against the Mastadons, including a 3 game sweep to open the home schedule in 2009
Michigan		vs		IPFW
Saturday 1:05pm, Ray Fisher Stadium
Bobby Brosnahan(1-2, 5.14 ERA)		vs		TBA
Stats	Audio
Notes:
Michigan		vs		IPFW
Saturday 30min after Game 2, Ray Fisher Stadium
TBA		vs		TBA
Stats	Audio
Notes: My guess is Miller starts. Game time change!

Ah yes, home opening day. The true signal of spring has come to Ann Arbor is here at last. No longer shall the Michigan team have to travel from Lubbock, TX to St. Petersburg, FL to Chapel Hill, NC to Conway, SC to Port St. Lucie. This weekend, the baseball team returns to it's friendly confines of Ray Fisher Stadium at the Wilpon Complex. They return home, where they haven't lost a home opener since 2000 (30-3 since 1975).

Preview and such after jump…

Or, why my bracket is a mess.

To follow up on the previous KenPom charts and graphs, I decided to pick my NCAA tourney bracket based on Ken's predictions and see how accurate he is.  The way I used the data is as follows:  I assumed that M = (AdjOffence - AdjDefense)* (AdjTempo)/100 gives an average margin of victory for the dataset.  Then, M1 - M2 = margin of victory difference between the two team playing.  To apply to the Michigan/Ohio State games gives
Michigan = (107.0 - 92.7) * (62.7/100) = 8.99
Ohio State = (118.9 - 89.8) * (65.8 / 100) = 19.1
Which predicts a 10.1 point margin of victory for OSU, pretty close to the actual KenPom prediction.

I'll save you all the eye chart of the data table.  If you're interested, it's here: 
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtVjC1g8WVJfdFFJR0F4ZEhRNGQyVTZB...
The relevant data:

					predicted	actual
team	adjusted tempo	adjusted offense	adjusted defense	difference	rd1
Duke	66.6852	121.47903	85.90015	23.72584729	28.71596632	29
Kansas	68.3863	121.44865	86.07246	24.19246742	24.84369214	16
Wisconsin	60.2126	116.45837	87.28726	17.56468378	11.29768539	4
Ohio St.	65.8254	118.95206	89.81885	19.17705202	17.99644835	17
Syracuse	70.746	117.86636	89.08539	20.36138504	17.3322846	23
Kentucky	69.4046	115.499	87.67961	19.30793635	17.37462094	29
Brigham Young	72.8212	117.39741	89.58698	20.25188885	8.889108347	7
West Virginia	63.4144	117.45049	90.03022	17.3883997	15.9712738	27
Kansas St.	71.0506	115.80342	88.85456	19.14732672	18.92650121	20
Maryland	70.1779	119.08432	91.72191	19.20236473	14.6032751	12
Georgetown	66.568	117.55443	90.86621	17.76581429	12.0774709	-14
Baylor	65.821	119.55356	92.74282	17.64709718	12.01782068	9
Purdue	67.1526	109.82044	86.43841	15.70164108	5.331953813	8
California	68.4634	121.03346	95.61323	17.40355375	4.205805859	15
Villanova	72.8674	118.6973	93.87151	18.0899077	19.06129835	3
Clemson	69.0581	110.39498	87.65073	15.70674691	0.24014592	8
Texas	72.7178	113.39859	90.23584	16.84344222	5.30461363	-1
Temple	61.2054	107.49016	85.70485	13.33378613	4.035245019	-13
Florida St.	66.8561	105.16445	83.88638	14.22568776	2.918960477	-7
Utah St.	61.5388	116.42159	92.9556	14.44068865
Missouri	70.5163	109.76675	87.83338	15.46660099
Xavier	70.7384	115.82011	92.69146	16.36083695	1.677395019	11
Texas A&M	65.6301	111.89438	89.90554	14.43129768	-0.009390973	16
Michigan St.	67.1182	112.03972	90.26292	14.61619618	10.01710655	3
Minnesota	66.6113	114.14477	92.1013	14.68344193
Butler	65.1637	109.60831	88.44321	13.79196227	0.483029584	18
Georgia Tech	69.6931	109.49437	88.67489	14.50974102	2.127220831	5
Marquette	63.7768	114.2881	92.58042	13.84446366	-1.604015104	-2
Washington	73.212	112.62146	91.52044	15.44847876
Pittsburgh	61.8641	111.69304	90.87344	12.87985816	10.70287965	23
Virginia Tech	69.215	107.40448	87.82223	13.55385434
Northern Iowa	59.905	107.33922	87.87319	11.66112527	-0.983365598	3
Old Dominion	64.0632	107.91845	88.5319	12.4196443
Texas El Paso	69.45	107.47143	88.3081	13.30893269
Tennessee	69.4899	106.15591	87.3393	13.07564347	0.873802425	3
Vanderbilt	69.7518	114.01593	94.1034	13.8893481	3.130584581	-1
Nevada Las Vegas	67.3486	109.46974	90.69505	12.64449087
Notre Dame	63.7293	119.82189	99.29155	13.08384197	0.66419767	-1
Louisville	67.2914	114.92586	95.31303	13.19774789
San Diego St.	64.6273	110.97383	92.09351	12.20184105
Mississippi St.	67.3041	109.28839	90.90574	12.37227714
Arizona St.	62.2639	110.10876	91.62218	11.51046568
St. Mary's	67.99	114.92716	95.70062	13.07212455
Oklahoma St.	68.0078	112.20736	93.99986	12.38252019
Dayton	66.2161	105.97277	88.83869	11.34551955
Miami FL	66.4123	113.37386	95.10575	12.13227202
New Mexico	68.6401	114.31427	95.96488	12.59503965	7.920566861	5
Richmond	64.1081	108.36048	91.18129	11.0132523	-2.058872242	-9
Florida	65.4107	112.27696	94.90552	11.3627805
Wake Forest	70.2826	106.582	90.16424	11.53882859

Calculating the probable winners in this fashion gave a win/loss of 24/8.  And, four of those that are wrong were predicted to be 3 point games, and ended up +/- 3.  Here's the corresponding chart.



I calculated the total average margin of error (absolute value) for all games at 7.44, and margin of error in games correct at 7.07, and margin of error in games wrong at 10.6.

I next calculated the distribution of error.  Since I used absolute value in the previous calculation, I ended up with half a bell-curve distribution.  Data:

+/-5	+/-10	+/-15	+/-20	+/-25
14	9	4	4	0

Chart:

So I was planning on interviewing Michigan baseball coach Rich Maloney tomorrow, but this morning's Michigan Insider with Sam Webb had their time with Rich Maloney this morning and they more than asked pretty much all of my same questions. So I'll summarize Maloney's comments here (full audio):

• The rotation is still up in the air. Oaks and Brosnahan appear to have solidified their spot in the weekend. Burgoon is going back to the closer role for now, but if Miller continues to struggle, Burgoon will be the third guy. If for some reason we don't have to use Burgoon in a Friday and Saturday, we could see him on Sunday as well.
• Ryan LaMarre is due to have the pins out of his thumb tomorrow (Wednesday). It should be at least a week of rehab to build up strength. Maloney expects LaMarre to battle to get in quicker against Indiana, but "but that might be a bit of a reach."
• Coley Crank has been a surprise to Maloney. They knew he'd one day be an offensive force, but his explosion this early was surprising. He's also greatly improved his defense.
• "Chris Berset is playing at an unbelievable level right now. He's truly one of the best catchers in the country right now."
• "Dufek hasn't been hitting them out of the park, but he's been starting to come alive with the bat." We'll have some more on this later in the week here at mgoblog.
• We're playing at Stanford next year, at LSU in 2012.
• Rain delays in Atlanta pushed back getting into Ann Arbor from 10pm Sunday via airplane to 2pm Monday (with a 12 hour bus trip).
• WTKA will broadcast 10 games this season between WTKA and WLBY

So it sounds like LaMarre is still on schedule. I wouldn't be surprised to see Ryan get a few at bats against Indiana, at least in a DH or pinch hitter role, most likely the latter.

Weekend Wrap

The Wolverines faced some of the greatest adversity they've experienced all season, but managed to emerge from their game against Oregon with their 46-game win streak intact. The Ducks didn't go down without a fight, however, pushing the game to overtime before a Trevor Yealy goal gave Michigan a 5-4 victory.

The scene was Dallas for the 2010 Patriot Cup, benefitting the Wounded Warrior Project. The MCLA matchup between #1 Michigan and #7 Oregon was the headlining event of the weeklong, 18-game Patriot Cup. The weather, however, didn't get the memo, and the teams had to play through cold temperatures, snow, and high winds. It's understandable, considering the conditions, how low-scoring the game turned out to be.

The game never turned strongly in favor of either team, as the Ducks got on board first, but senior Jamie Goldberg scored for Michigan to tie the game up at the end of the first quarter. Svet Tintchev added a tally of his own shortly before halftime, and Michigan went into the locker room with a slim 2-1 lead. Michigan got third-quarter goals from junior Trevor Yealy and senior Josh Ein, and Oregon notched one of their own to make the margin 4-3 in favor of the Wolverines heading to the fourth. The quarter nearly passed scoreless, but Oregon managed to force the extra frame with just seconds left. In overtime, however, Michigan forced a turnover and Trevor Yealy buried the game-winner for the 5-4 victory.

Mark Stone got the start in net, and finished with nine saves. Faceoff specialist David Reinhard won 7 of his 12 draws, a somewhat subpar result given his exceptional play thus far in the season. Yealy was the only multi-goal scorer, but Jamie Goldeberg and Anthony Hrusovsky each tallied two points.

(Official site recap)

Based on reports (and the @UmichLacrosse Twitter feed), both teams played sloppy, which is understandable given the conditions. However, the season will come to a point where the sloppy play (which happened in much better conditions on the Arizona/BYU road trip) has to be attributed to the team not being quite as dominant as they were last year. Who knows if that will eventually cost them a game.

Up Next

Michigan will have its second consecutive one-game weekend, as this time they'll travel to Milwaukee to take on Minnesota-Duluth on Saturday. The Bulldogs were ranked #6 in last week's Prodigy Poll, and are the owners of a 6-1 record. Their one defeat came at Arizona State, where Michigan managed to pull out an 11-10 victory. Other than that, the strength of schedule is questionable, as they've defeated horrible Saint Cloud State (pounded by Eastern MIchigan!), unranked MSU-Mankato, Central Michigan, and Wisconsin Milwaukee, and fringe top-20 teams in Lindenwood and Cal. They've lost to the only competition they've played that's even close to Michigan's level.

Offensively, Duluth is led by sophomore attack Alex McNamara, who averages 3.6 goals and 1.6 assists per game, and senior middie Daniel Pitzl (a 2009 2nd-Team All-American), who adds 2.6 goals and 1.4 assists of his own. Sophomores Drake Peterson and redshirt sophomore Kevin Gaydos also average more than three points in each contest. Benjamin Shandley and Andrew Madsen are both very good faceoff specialist, winning over 70% on the year, so there should be some entertaining battles with Michigan's David Reinhard. Redshirt sophomore Joey Slattery is the #1 goalie, allowing 3.2 goals per game, and saving just over 70% of shots faced.

The game is being played at a neutral site (Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI), and weather shouldn't play a huge factor, as it's projected to be in the mid-40s and sunny on Saturday. I encourage all MIchigan fans (and especially lacrosse fans) in the Milwaukee, CHicago, and Madison areas to make the trek out to see a championship-caliber Wolverine squad take on a ranked opponent.

Beating The Varsity Drum

It's no secret that the Michigan Lacrosse team very much wants to earn varsity status from the Athletic Department (and I've made it no secret that I support such a move). I asked a former Michigan Lacrosse player a few questions about why the team deserves to be a varsity sport, and how this should happen. Greatest hits:

On why the Michigan Lacrosse team deserves varsity status:

If you want to know what makes them worthy, the short answer is that they have already gotten most of the way there without varsity status, and now want a chance to be the best of the best. What more can you ask for in sports besides a shot at being the best?

What makes this situation unique is the fact that the organizational structure currently in place is a highly capable group, and has been operating as a “virtual varsity” program for many years now. When varsity teams are added to any university, a typical process would be to hire the staff a year or two ahead of the target inaugural season for planning and recruiting purposes. This team is good to go tomorrow given the chance.

...Which provides a perfect segue into how long it would take for the team to be competitive on the D-1 level, should they be promoted:

There are several reasons that the transition to varsity competition will be much smoother for Michigan than some might think. First of all, the current club team has beaten several Division I programs in exhibition play. The current talent on the team consists of more than a handful of players that either turned down the chance to play for Division I teams to come to Michigan, or would be significant contributors in a Division I program. Another reason is the number of students from the east coast that come to Michigan. Even though the sport is growing across the country, the bulk of blue chip recruits still come from Atlantic states like New York and Maryland. The Michigan brand already draws a relatively large percentage of the student body from these areas, which would enable the rapid expansion of the team’s recruiting footprint into traditional hotbeds. Finally, the planned facilities featured in an earlier post would be bar none the best in the country.

He also points out that the infallible Transitive Rule of Sports Victory show MIchigan has beaten opponents in the past several years that have gone on to make the NCAA tournament in subsequent years, or themselves beaten an opponent that ultimately made the tournament. Assuming a boost from moving up to the D-1 level, they could step in and be competitive right away.

The final question I asked regarded why now is the right time for the team to earn varsity status, when it hasn't been for the past several years:

[T]he program has reached critical mass at the club level. While there are still many good teams in the MCLA, Michigan has asserted its dominance over the past several years and now only plays a few competitive games each season. In order to find good competition, the team has to travel to places like California, Utah, and Arizona, which is not easy to pull off on a club budget. The truth is that the current level of operations is only made possible by the level of private support that the team receives, which is not sustainable in the long run nor worthwhile if the team is never elevated to varsity status.

The change in athletic director played a role in spawning the effort by providing a timeline for taking a proposal to the university. When Bill Martin announced his retirement, Coach Paul initiated several conversations about what we would need to do to ensure that lacrosse was on the new athletic director’s agenda from day one. Unfortunately, our departing AD was not a supporter of elevating lacrosse to NCAA Division I during his tenure.

It seems as though positive steps are being taken toward varsity status, something that certainly sounds long overdue. The change in AD seems to be a major benefit, if only because there's at least the chance he's listening. David Brandon can do no wrong, man. So far, he's been a home run pick.

In the name of this post running too long, I'll cut off the varsity talk there this week, but make no mistake, I'll be hitting this topic in nearly every update.

Women!

The men aren't Michigan's only club lacrosse team, as the women's club team has the coveted "Varsity Club" distinction as well. While they haven't reached the same level of success as the men (but who has, really? Penn State club hockey?), they are a strong program in their own right. If a varsity push for the men's lacrosse team happens, it's likely that the women's lacrosse squad might be the program promoted at the same time, to satisfy Title IX requirements.

The women earned a 3-game sweep over the weekend, beating Michigan State 12-2, Pitt 13-10, and Miami (Not That Miami Unless You're Talking About Hockey, In Which Case Yes That Miami) 18-10. Thanks to their media contact Stuart Zaas for keeping me updated, and if you're interested in learning more about the women's lacrosse team, check out their website.