NCAA Men’s Soccer Data Analysis & Scout Report 2022/23

The USAs NCAA college soccer scene is a world unto its own.

Arguably the highest level of amateur football in the world, it offers its student-athletes an opportunity to continue playing the game they love at a high level while earning their university degree.

Many schools can also provide facilities that rival anything youll find at the professional ranks.

In fact, some of the more prominent Division 1 schools are on par with footballs elite in terms of the facilities and staffing they offer.

If we were to poll NCAA college soccer players, asking if they would love the opportunity to advance from NCAA college soccer to professional football, most would take the chance on themselves and give a resounding yes. Granted, who wouldnt? While it is amateur football, NCAA soccer, across all three divisions, features former players from the semi-pro ranks (think 2^nd or 3^rd divisions) and even youth internationals.

Theres quality in the American college soccer system, and its largely untapped.

This data analysis is the start of a series on NCAA Division 1 college soccer.

In this article, well start by identifying playing styles through data.

Looking at non-conference games, defined early in the next section, weve used Wyscouts database to help clubs and scouts identify which programs are at the top of the game and play a similar style.

For the college coaches reading this article, it will also give some insight into how to use Wyscouts statistical database to scout opponents.

This analysis will also include a look at how the college game relates to professional leagues in the USA and Europe, the two most common destinations for American college soccer players.

One last point, youve surely noticed and maybe cringed at the sighting of soccer. Dont worry; youll endure.

To distinguish between football and NCAA football (the American variant), the use of soccer will refer to the NCAA rendition of the game.

Identifying the top attacking teams

Lets start this data analysis with a look at attacking statistics.

Each of the statistics comes directly from Wyscout and encompasses non-conference play in 2022.

For anyone unfamiliar with the NCAA college soccer system, most teams will play 16 to 20 matches during their regular season.

Those matches are split between conference and non-conference opponents.

Larger conferences or those with home and away setups will play more in conference matches and fewer out-of-conference.

On the flip side, if a conference has 10 teams, its often to see an even split between the two types of games.

Conference games are constants from year-to-year while non-conference opponents are entirely at the volition of the coaching staff.

You can load up with a difficult out-of-conference schedule or target weaker teams to boost your win total, albeit at the cost of killing your strength of schedule rating, which impacts national tournament selection.

Non-conference matches count toward a teams overall record, which has implications if you reach the NCAA national tournament, a knockout competition with a very similar setup to NCAA basketball (March Madness).

Conference matches count towards your conference playoff seeding.

The winner of the conference playoffs has an automatic qualification spot in the national tournament.

Additional teams from your conference could make it to the tournament if their record and strength of competition are high enough, but the only way to guarantee a spot in the national tournament is to win your conference tournament.

For this data analysis, were looking specifically at the non-conference matches.

The way Wyscout segments the statistics, they have data available for most D1 teams, but the listing is segmented into non-conference or conference.

We wanted to include as many teams as possible in this data analysis without going through the monotony of downloading over 200 sets of season statistics.

The majority of the teams feature 7 to 10 matches worth of data.

Were using that information in most of the report, though you will see a visualisation in the next section that pulls season-wide data from the top conferences in the country.

Well be sure to point it out.

Lets start with a more general look at last seasons performances, plotting goals for and against.

That will set the scene for the remainder of this analysis, highlighting top and bottom performers and some other programs in between.

The goals for and against visualisation is designed to identify top performers in the top right quadrant and the other end of the scale at the bottom left.

UNC Charlotte was the clear standout in this chart, far outpacing the competition with 4.67 goals P90 in their non-conference schedule.

You can also see some of the traditional powerhouses trailing them.

Stanford, Syracuse (the 2022 national champion), Duke and Creighton all performed well.

Marshall, the 2020 national champion, is up there as well.

Its time to turn to how these teams construct play.

This is where Wyscout data can give the individual programs, as well as clubs and scouting agencies, an idea of each teams attacking tendencies.

Touches in the penalty box and deep completions P90 serve as an excellent bridge between the goals chart and the ones to follow in that it shows us whic