UNCs Anson Dorrance is the most iconic NCAA soccer coach in history.
The NCAA wins leader has 934 career wins, emerged victorious with 21 national championships, won the first-ever Women’s World Cup in 1991, and coached the likes of Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, Cindy Parlow, and Tisha Venturini.
He has also managed players who went on to become elite coaches themselves.
Saturday’s USWNT versus England matchup featured former Tar Heel Sarina Wiegman against former WSL and Chelsea manager Emma Hayes.
Hayes didn’t don the Carolina blue, but she did have Dorrance as a course instructor, so his legacy goes well beyond the university.
The allure of playing for Dorrance has consistently brought top talent to his program.
Just last year, three of his players were selected in the first round of the NWSL draft, including the top two picks in Ally Sentnor and Savy King, and another three players were drafted.
Still, more players went undrafted, yet are playing professionally now.
UNC is a model of consistency.
Thats what makes them such a fascinating case study.
Given the coachs profile and the talent within the squad, I simulated a postmortem for the teams 2023 season.
Starting with data, I built a sample report that included film from the season to identify strengths within the current group and areas for improvement.
This data analysis is a sampling of the mock report.
While there is no video, what we have here is a sampling of the process used to produce a portion of the report.
For selfish purposes, it was an excuse to build a model for a season review.
This article gives an idea of the direction and workflow.
Unpacking UNC’s Womens Soccer Season
Lets set up the problem.
When reviewing 2023 UNCs Womens soccer season, we first wanted to look at objective performance data.
Thats where we looked not only at goals for and against but also at xG statistics.
Scoring goals is the ultimate objective, but in order to score those goals, you have to create chances.
In theory, the more opportunities and the higher-quality chances generated, the more successful a team should be in putting the ball in the back of the net.
In the first graph, we immediately notice that UNC was one of the top few teams in xG, making them one of the most prolific attacking sides in the country.
NCAA D1 Womens Soccer Goals & xG Chart 2023
The issue is that goals per game lingered well behind xG.
While UNC produced 2.72 xG per game, their goals per game sat at 2.04, a 25% decrease.
Over the course of a 25-game schedule, thats a lot of goals t
