If you ever watched Drew Carey, Wayne Brady, Ryan Stiles, and Colin Mochrie, you’ve been told that the points do not matter.
For a team like Orange County Soccer Club, who just came off an abysmal 2022 season, the points mean one thing: getting back to the USL Championship playoffs in October. American sports have an obsession with a random crapshoot of games at the end of a long season, and love it or hate it, lifting the USL Championship Cup is arguably the best accomplishment a team can achieve.
So how can OCSC return to playoff form and championship glory? Let’s take a look.
Playoff Format
With the departure of Atlanta United 2, LA Galaxy II, and New York Red Bulls II to MLS Next Pro, the league stands at a neat 24 teams split into a balanced Eastern and Western Conference. USLC will look to expand in the coming seasons, but a 24-team league just seems cozy. The top eight teams in each conference will make the playoffs in the form of a single-elimination bracket. This is the correct format for the playoffs; other leagues should take note and stop messing with their playoffs just to make more money (looking at you, MLS).
For OCSC, the objective is simple: be one of the top eight teams in the Western Conference. Can they do it? We’ll know as the games get underway this month.
2022 Playoffs Recap
Last season, 14 teams (7 from each conference) made the playoffs and battled it out before San Antonio FC eventually took home the cup. Here’s how the table shook out at the end of the season.
If you expand the table to include a potential 8-seed, you would get FC Tulsa with 42 points in the East and El Paso Locomotive FC with 46 points in the West.
OCSC had 34 points in 2022, good for dead last in the West and what would’ve been 11th place in the East. So the team needs to find a lot more points in 2023 if they’re going to make a run at their second cup come October. But how many points do they need?
Win at home, draw on the road
One of the most common soccer strategies is to “win at home, draw on the road”, which makes sense. You should get a bump when you play in front of a home crowd, especially OCSC, a team that’s cultivated an incredible game day atmosphere full of passionate fans that turn out every single week. Conversely, if you’re going into hostile territory, you should do your best to not look terrible and “steal” a point from the home side. Sounds easy enough, right?
Let’s say OCSC takes this phrase to heart and does just that. At the end of 34 games, OCSC will have the bizarre record of 17-17-0, which translates to 68 points. That would’ve put them at the 2-seed in both the East and the West in 2022, which is a great place to be.
Alas, things often don’t go to plan, as evidenced by OCSC’s faceplant in 2022. What if they continue to stumble and just barely eek into the playoffs, what would that look like?
If we look at the pretend 8-seeds above, Tulsa and El Paso, their records were 12-6-16 and 13-7-14, respectively. Using the better of the two, OCSC would need to beat El Paso by 1 point, which means a 13-8-13 record. OCSC’s actual record in 2022 was 7-13-14, which included an abysmal 5 wins at home.
Knowing where the playoff line is expected to be, this means OCSC should aim for somewhere between 47-68 points to secure a spot in the 2023 USL Championship postseason. If you want to get snuggly in the middle of that range, you’d be looking at 58 points. This puts OCSC at the #4 seed in the East and the #3 seed in the West in 2022. How can OCSC manage that?
Soccer is a marathon, not a sprint
Using our target of 58 points, this equates to roughly 1.7 points/game. It doesn’t seem like much, but because teams can only earn 3, 1, or 0 points each time they play, every point dropped makes that pace harder to keep up with. Conversely, each extra win will drop that rate and give you some extra breathing room.
If you drop 15 games, you can only get a maximum of 57 points total if you win every one of the other 19 games. If we’re being honest, when you’re dropping 15 games, it is unlikely you are winning the other 19 games. Dropping 10 games gives you a maximum of 72 possible points, but again, the odds of a 24 game winning season is unlikely. For context, the highest win total last season was 22. Looking at last year, Colorado Springs and RGV lost 13 games and still made it into the playoffs. If you’re looking for a birds-eye view of the season, a yellow flag should go up if OCSC loses 10 games. That yellow flag should start quickly transitioning to red if they go beyond that. If the team hits 15 losses, throw the flag in the garbage and set it on fire.
If thinking about season-long scenarios gets a bit overwhelming, I’m with you. I find it easier to look at the season in chunks. For our argument, let’s break the season down by points needed per month. Below is a table of each month, the amount of games, and how many points would be needed to stay on track to hit the 58-point target.
This will be a handy table that I’ll update after each month of the season. Right now, this is the blueprint to get to 58 points and the playoffs. If OCSC comes out scorching and runs the table in March, then they’ll need to do less work in the other months (let’s not talk about the opposite scenario).
Unfortunately, we can’t get .12 points in a soccer game, so in order to exceed the 5.12 target for March, OCSC needs to win 2 of their 3 games. Can they do it?
March at a glance
The good news? All 3 of OCSC’s games in March are at Championship Stadium, and one of them is against the Las Vegas Lights FC, a team known for dropping money out of helicopters and being generally terrible at soccer.
The bad news? The other two teams are Louisville City FC and the Tampa Bay Rowdies, the #1 and #3 seed from the East in 2022.
Do you see where I’m going yet? OCSC should (key word should) be able to pencil in a win against Las Vegas. There’s no excuse not to beat them. Yes, it’s early in the season, but good teams win the games they’re supposed to win, and OCSC is supposed to win this one. Especially when we get into the 5-game months, the team needs to have some points in the bank for when the inevitable fatigue of a long soccer season kicks in.
Now, can OCSC lose to Vegas and still get into the playoffs? Yeah, absolutely. Especially if they come out and punch Louisville and Tampa in the face and get 6 points from those two contests, but I have my doubts.
Ideally, OCSC comes out on March 11 and welcomes the fans back with a decisive win against Louisville (how about a Milan brace coupled with a clean sheet?). This gives them a little room to scuffle a bit against the Rowdies and squeak out a draw, or even a loss. Then, they end the month by kicking the snot out of Vegas and cruising into April with 6 points.
Soccer is back, baby
So, there you have it. We’ve got our target and roadmap to the playoffs. Now it’s up to the team to put the plan into action. Let’s meet up again in April; hopefully we’re celebrating a cool 6 points from the boys in Orange and Black.