Early Look at Hitting Percentage

We had an early look at Strength of Schedule so I thought I would also do a brief article on everyone’s favorite statistics, hitting percentage. As any reader who has been tuned in since at least July (my last update on this), team hitting percentage is the only shared statistics with the last 8 national champions. It could be more but I just didn’t have the data to find out. Anyway, if you want to be the DIII National Champion then you have to end the year in the Top 11 of this statistic.

I just checked the NCAA Statistics page and they have updated the site through the matches over the weekend. Here are your Top 11 and only teams that have any chance at a national championship this year:

Rank	Team	Sets	Kills	Errors	Total Attacks	Pct.
1	Calvin (Michigan Intercol. Ath. Assn.)	36	500	140	1,201	0.300
2	Saint Benedict (MIAC)	46	647	145	1,692	0.297
3	Johns Hopkins (Centennial)	38	516	141	1,273	0.295
4	Stevenson (MAC Commonwealth)	40	553	146	1,420	0.287
5	Tufts (NESCAC)	33	451	142	1,089	0.284
6	Colorado Col. (SCAC)	52	744	247	1,778	0.280
7	Mount Union (OAC)	57	735	200	1,958	0.273
8	Carthage (CCIW)	52	683	189	1,826	0.271
9	JWU (Providence) (Great Northeast)	32	414	126	1,065	0.270
10	Babson (NEWMAC)	35	451	146	1,132	0.269
11	Carnegie Mellon (UAA)	52	658	207	1,679	0.269

Oh, Hendrix. Just 0.001 point from being a national championship contender. Better luck next year!

The big surprise to me was that JWU (RI) is “only” 9^th on this list. They’ve been leading this category the past few years but they still have a lot of New England matches left to pad their numbers.

Calvin has played a tough schedule and still put up a 0.300 number. That’s pretty darn good and a strong indicator on how good this team really is and will be come November. Despite their injury to All-American Margo Spaethling, Colorado College still finds themselves in the middle of this list. Good to see my eyeballs match the statistics when it comes to Carthage.

Some teams that we might doubt but maybe shouldn’t are Saint Benedict, Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon. As for the others…

Stevenson is 12-0 but hasn’t played a great schedule. Still, they do have a 5-set win over Salisbury who isn’t too bad. A team to watch out for as they get to the tougher part of their season. Unfortunately, other than a match against Johns Hopkins I’m not sure when that will occur.

Tufts (9-0) just beat Wesleyan in 4-sets and will play JWU (RI) this weekend. Certainly a team that looks on their way to a conference title or failing that will probably be an at-large team.

Mount Union (14-3) has had a nice season and is certainly a team I’m keeping my eye out for the Top 25. They have Transylvania and Carnegie Mellon this week so that certainly will tell us how strong this team is.

Babson (11-0) has just feasted on the second best New England and New York has to offer so far this season. Their schedule is just so sad but at least they have Tufts down the road. One of those teams can claim that they are great because they beat the other that didn’t beat anyone. That was a bit harsh because at least Tufts is going to play JWU (RI).