[BigEasyCard]

+1 to MT. I don't think these sports all matter equally, because we regularly score points in more sports than we can count, so what we're looking for is teams who are likely to score 55 or 60+ points. The comparison is our PAR (points above replacement) team, which is the team whose score we'd have to replace. BigEasy will know for sure, but my sense has been in past years our last score that's counted has been around 50 or so points, so we'd be looking for the highest PAR above 50. It might be even higher this year, since there's one fewer total sport to count, and our women's scores usually are higher and so we could count the 11th women's sports if it's better.

In softball, significantly beating PAR is really unlikely at the moment; scores are generally negligible unless you make progress into the NCAA tournament. Getting past the first round of the NCAA tournament only gets you to 50 points, and that's neglible PAR. So we'd need to have not just a solid team, but a dominant one.

By contrast, with Water Polo, second place is like 90 points, so the key is to get past the MPSF and into the NCAA's, and then get to the championship game. Given how much parity there is between us, U$C, UCLA, and ןɐɔ, that's almost always plausible. Even third place is 55, which is a PAR of 5, so that semifinal game turns out to be worth far more than the final, national championship notwithstanding.

Men's volleyball is similarly boom or bust - third place is also only worth 55. Given this, I'd rather have us be mediocre 8 years out of 10 and in the championship game the other two, which is more or less what's happened. Anything in between just doesn't give us much.

Beach Volleyball is slightly more nuanced; the same 90 points for second place as in MWP and MVB, but third place is worth 72.5, and fourth is 55. That might change since the sport seems to keep expanding, but for now, similar PAR considerations: either be nearly the top in the country or irrelevant for Directors Cup points.

Given all this, what's much more important is that we score in all 4 required sports and a lot of the sports where "participation counts," like tennis, gymnastics, T&F, CC, and soccer. In those sports you can get around 60-70 points just for a tenth place finish, and it's usually been our consistent top ten performance across many of these sports that's kept the cup in our cupboard.

2006, I just reviewed Directors' Cup points for 2016-17.  On the Men's side, the lowest score included was 50 points each for Wrestling and Baseball.  On the Women's side, the lowest score included was 60.75 for Outdoor Track & Field.  Including Fencing, the Men averaged 68.75 for ten scoring sports and the Women averaged 83.0.  A total of five lower scores were excluded due to the ten-sport limit for each gender.

Geaux Cardinal! 

[BigEasyCard]

+1 to MT. I don't think these sports all matter equally, because we regularly score points in more sports than we can count, so what we're looking for is teams who are likely to score 55 or 60+ points. The comparison is our PAR (points above replacement) team, which is the team whose score we'd have to replace. BigEasy will know for sure, but my sense has been in past years our last score that's counted has been around 50 or so points, so we'd be looking for the highest PAR above 50. It might be even higher this year, since there's one fewer total sport to count, and our women's scores usually are higher and so we could count the 11th women's sports if it's better.

In softball, significantly beating PAR is really unlikely at the moment; scores are generally negligible unless you make progress into the NCAA tournament. Getting past the first round of the NCAA tournament only gets you to 50 points, and that's neglible PAR. So we'd need to have not just a solid team, but a dominant one.

By contrast, with Water Polo, second place is like 90 points, so the key is to get past the MPSF and into the NCAA's, and then get to the championship game. Given how much parity there is between us, U$C, UCLA, and ןɐɔ, that's almost always plausible. Even third place is 55, which is a PAR of 5, so that semifinal game turns out to be worth far more than the final, national championship notwithstanding.

Men's volleyball is similarly boom or bust - third place is also only worth 55. Given this, I'd rather have us be mediocre 8 years out of 10 and in the championship game the other two, which is more or less what's happened. Anything in between just doesn't give us much.

Beach Volleyball is slightly more nuanced; the same 90 points for second place as in MWP and MVB, but third place is worth 72.5, and fourth is 55. That might change since the sport seems to keep expanding, but for now, similar PAR considerations: either be nearly the top in the country or irrelevant for Directors Cup points.

Given all this, what's much more important is that we score in all 4 required sports and a lot of the sports where "participation counts," like tennis, gymnastics, T&F, CC, and soccer. In those sports you can get around 60-70 points just for a tenth place finish, and it's usually been our consistent top ten performance across many of these sports that's kept the cup in our cupboard.

2006, I just reviewed Directors' Cup points for 2016-17.  On the Men's side, the lowest score included was 50 points each for Wrestling and Baseball.  On the Women's side, the lowest score included was 60.75 for Outdoor Track & Field.  Including Fencing, the Men averaged 68.75 for ten scoring sports and the Women averaged 83.0.  A total of five lower scores were excluded due to the ten-sport limit for each gender.

Geaux Cardinal!