Second Half Score and Lineup Prediction Contest Roundup

Another season has concluded and that means it is time to recap the season. First off, thanks to Tres_Tristes_Tigres, who took over calculating everyone’s scores half way through the season. They were a tremendous help and made this much more manageable. Second, thanks to all of you for participating in the contest. With the poor on-field performance, we had fewer people making predictions. By the end of the season we only had 17 people making regular predictions. Still, as edmondk noted, it gave something to look forward to with each match, which became increasingly more difficult as the season wound down. Without further adieu, let’s get to the numbers.

First, we will start with the final match of the season against RSL. For the recap we go to Tres_Tristes_Tigres

After an unbeaten run that was capped off with an away win against Zlatan and the Galaxy, many of us were feeling quite optimistic about the home (and season) finale against Real Salt Lake. As has often been the case this year, our optimism was thoroughly punished.

GreyHouseEffect earned the highest score in the final match of this year’s contest. They won largely through being the only person immune to the optimism surrounding the Caps’ chances in the game, correctly predicted the loss. Two others predicted a draw while the vast majority wrongly went with a win prediction.

Despite the abundance of optimism and win predictions, a majority still correctly predicted a possession stat within 44%. It says a lot about the season that even riding a high we couldn’t fathom the Caps keeping a majority of possession at home.

Most of us also predicted that RSL would score one goal. Unfortunately, everyone also predicted that the Caps would score as well.

Second, we have the September/October Standings.

Congratulations to Columbian_Southsider77, who was our winner for September and October. They finished top three in each of the four matches, including sharing the lead for the LA Galaxy match. They join our other monthly winners this season.

• March: AmandaC, CascadiaCrunchFC, tecate, & Westsider13 (53 Points)
• April: CapsOnTheDrive (65 Points)
• May: IslandLife (113 Points)
• July: Westsider13 (97 Points)
• August: Isabelt (95 Points)
• September/October: Columbian_Southsider77 (60)

Finally, we have the Second Half Standings. I was hoping that withholding the scores the final few matches would increase the drama in a way as people would not know what they needed to ‘win’. However, as I mentioned last week, I believe, it ended up being anti-climatic as there was a BIG lead.

Congrats to Isabelt, who ran away with the contest, beating CascadiaCrunchFC by 10 points (204 to 194)! Interestingly, they scored the same amount of points as our first half winner Island Life.

As you know, I enjoy statistics, so as usual I have all the individual stats for you as well.

Of those making regular predictions, CDPrior and tecate were the best with their lineup predictions, scoring an average of 9/11. tecate, along with AshMan77 led the way with three perfect lineup predictions. Meanwhile, Westider13 (10), GreyHouseEffect (9), and CascadiaCrunchFC (9) were the best at predicting the winner. Sometimes predicting the score can be a bit of a crap-shoot, but five people averaged more than one point per match. Isabelt narrowly led the way with an average of 1.18. Finally, we have our monthly bonus category. First, thanks to all of you for your suggestions. I will make sure to keep them around for next season. We might need to narrow that possession window as it seemed everyone did far too well on that :P. However, across the second half, the person who did the best was Columbian_Southsider77, who managed 21 ‘monthly’ bonus points.

Congrats to all of our best, and to all of us who played but were terrible (just glad I wasn’t last!). We will be back next season. Also, if you have any suggestions for mixing it up next season let me know in the comments and we can look at implementing them.