New England Statistics Loss (2025)?

My loyal readers know that my least favorite region is (let’s all say it together); New England. Well, it’s really the two New England regions. My dislike originally comes from a selection system that didn’t account for all of the benefits the teams get in these regions. To summarize, there are just a ton of DIII teams in the Northeast and the old selection criteria really liked that. The NCAA Power Index (NPI) is a little fairer in this regard but as long as there are enough teams in an area to pick and choose the teams that will boost your NPI, high density regions will have an advantage. Increasing my dislike was the fact that the New England teams often had one or two regions where they were assured of getting teams to the Elite 8. Then to top it off, you can look at the 43 years of our DIII NCAA Tournament finals and see just one New England team has ever made it that far. (MIT lost to UC San Diego back in 1984.) Every year it was just rinse and repeat with New England teams gifted an Elite 8 spot only to be bounced quickly. With the expansion to 10 regions a few years back, a new dynamic was put in play where, at least, two regions would need to travel and could be used to strengthen weaker regionals. What seemed to be a disadvantage to the West Region (no local regional), really became an advantage as they could be given an easier regional where they could do some damage. In the end, this change has strengthened our Elite 8 giving us two years of incredible teams/matches. The recent change to protect the seeding of the top 8 has also helped greatly. Still, I do believe the teams from a high-density area will still have an easier time creating a higher NPI without really challenging themselves.

At this point, just know that I’m free flowing with my thoughts here. One drawback to NPI that we are going to see this season is the reluctance of teams to play quality opponents due to the fear of a big NPI hit. We saw that with the cancellation of our best DIII pre-conference tournament in the East/West Challenge. Could this actually help the New England teams? If the best of the best play a weaker schedule this season does that pull them back to more of what the New England teams do making the NCAA Tournament more of a crapshoot? I’m a strong believer that the best teams need to play the best so they are ready for that level of competition when it really matters. I don’t know…but kind of interesting, don’t you think?

I have really digressed from the point of this article, which is that I love the New England teams so much that I did a special statistics loss article just for the NEWMAC and the NESCAC! You guys are my mejor amigas; my labākais draugs.

Okay, what really happened is that I had a friend ask if I would do one of the New England conferences and I mixed up which team he wanted and did the other conference only to realize my mistake so I was forced to do both of the major New England conferences. Really kind of stupid but the result is we get a special New England Statistics Loss article. My apologies to the other schools in the region that are missing although JWU (RI) is in my national list so we’ll see them later.

As a reminder, “statistics loss” or “statistics lost” are the statistics accumulated the previous season by seniors. These are the stats that will be lost to the team in 2025 due to their graduation. I like to look at this data as it gives us an indication as to how the team should fare in the upcoming season. Of course, with any rule or theory, we have caveats. Caveats like some seniors are seniors academically but may have another year of eligibility. This would be a caveat that helps the team. Caveats that hurt the team further are players that leave due to injury or homesickness or financial reasons. These statistics also don’t account for the recruits coming in or that prized DI transfer. This is simply a baseline of where the team is probably going to be without those caveats running amok. From doing this for a number of years, we’ve learned that teams are much better at replacing assists and digs. Where teams can struggle is with Points Lost and getting to 45% or higher is a red flag. Points are kills plus aces plus blocks.

Here are the NEWMAC and NESCAC tables that show not only the Points Lost but also assists and digs lost to graduation. I also include the Points/Set number from last season. Remember that 18+ is elite, 17+ typically gets you into the NCAA Tournament, 16+ is good and then we go down from there. Below the table, I’ll give out some general thoughts but not go specifically into each team.

Wait! One more thing! Another really annoying fact about the New England teams is that I’m starting to like them. As I meet more coaches, fans and players, I run across those that support a New England program. It’s easy to hate a region but tougher to hate the individual. (There is a great lesson in that for our current political and world climate.) Anyway, here is my love letter to all of you.

NESCAC

NEWMAC

The NESCAC seems to be in pretty good shape overall. Trinity is the only team above the 45% mark and I would expect a big drop for them in 2025 but outside of them and, maybe, Wesleyan, things look good. What I did find fascinating with this group of teams is the Points/Set. Only one team, Colby, was above 17 Points/Set. The next closest was Tufts and Bowdoin. There are so many teams in the 15s with decent records, which will correlate to higher NPI numbers. Is this a sign that the NESCAC teams were slightly overrated in 2024? Maybe a Latvian wants to graph NPI against Points/Set for me? (Heck, they could have already done that with my memory being so bad.)

Back to Colby, and they look to be the clear-cut winner of this conference in 2025. You would have to put them as a possible favorite to get into the Elite 8, too. Outside of Trinity, I would take the teams with the 16+ Points/Set again this season. Bowdoin, Tufts and Middlebury should be able to shake off those graduation losses. Look for Williams to step up and be the dark horse of this conference.

Over to the NEWMAC and here we have three teams with 17+ Points/Set in Babson, MIT and Smith. All are in the that 30% range for Points Lost so they should be pretty safe to repeat their success. We do see big losses from Clark and Emerson and I would expect both programs to take a significant step back in 2025. Springfield is right at that 45% mark but they typically can shake off losses pretty well. Still, I doubt they reach that 16.80 Points/Set mark and are probably going to be one of those bubble teams next season. Coming back to that point about teams in the 15s with decent records, here we have a number of teams in the 14s with good records. Clark was above 0.500 with 14.33 Points/Set, Mount Holyoke was 0.500 at 14.33 and Coast Guard had a really good record sitting at 14.98. That all seems strange to me. Wheaton will be interesting to watch this season as they don’t lose anyone but have a starting point of 14.79 Points/Set. Will they get enough improvement from their returners to get this number into the 16s? That seems doubtful but a 0.500 record seems likely.

It looks like we are losing three 5-1 setters from these two conferences (Middlebury, Smith and Salve Regina). The NEWMAC also looks to be losing a number of liberos based on those Digs Lost numbers. Smith shows up there, again, but if you have to keep offense, assists or digs, it’s always better to keep your offense.

It should be another interesting year as these two conferences battle other teams in the region and each other. There are probably five if not six NCAA Tournament teams listed above but the real trick is whether any of them can break through and reach a tournament final. I’d love to see a Colby play an outstanding tough schedule and see what damage they could do when it counts. (To their credit, they did play Juniata and NYU last season but I’d love to see another out-of-region tournament from them against top teams in 2025.)

Alright, not the greatest of love letters but it did contain my heart in a few places. Just know, I will not be making this a habit, New England.