Podravka, the best team in crunch time
Throughout the course of the EHF Champions League Women and the Machineseeker EHF Champions League, data analyst Julian Rux provides the handball community with deep insights into the numbers behind the game, analysing what the data says about teams’ and players’ performances. Today, he takes a close look at HC Podravka Vegeta’s crunch time prowess.
In their play-off game of the EHF Champions League Women against Brest Bretagne Handball last Saturday, HC Podravka Vegeta once again had to fight until the end. Only Matea Pletikosic’s winning goal in the final second secured them the win in this Match of the Week. The 27:26 victory for the Croatian side marked the 12th time this season that their game has gone to crunch time, more than any other club.
The definition of crunch time here: The last six minutes of a match if the gap between the two teams is two goals or less at least once during those six minutes. However, if the difference between the two teams grows to five or more goals, it is no longer considered crunch time.
A closer look at the individual games makes Podravka’s figures even more interesting. Five of their eight losses were just by only one goal, one loss was by two goals, and just their away games in Metz (minus four) and against FTC (minus nine) were bigger losses.
After the group phase, they had three more losses than wins, but just a goal differential of -9, which is -0.6 per game, so virtually nothing. A deeper dive into the crunch time statistics of Podravka shows the reasons for that.
Outstanding in crunch time
Looking only at what happened during crunch time, no team is better than Podravka. An attack and a defence that are average over the whole game (24.9 goals scored and 25.5 goals conceded per 50 possessions) in crunch time suddenly become the second-best attack and fifth-best defence among all 16 teams that played in the EHF Champions League this season.
Using these statistics that are adjusted for possessions played is significantly more meaningful than just the raw number of goals (conceded). It makes the teams actually comparable since the raw number of goals is not only influenced by efficiency, but also by the number of possessions — whether a team and their opponents play rather fast or slow. Since a game has roughly 50 possessions on average (56.2 this season), the values here are calculated on 50 possessions, so that they roughly reflect those of a game.
In crunch time, Ivica Obrvan’s team scores 30.0 goals per 50 possessions; just Krim Mercator Ljubljana are slightly better with 31.0. Matea Pletikosic is particularly outstanding, as she once again impressively demonstrated last Saturday. The centre back scores a total of 0.92 crunch time goals per crunch time game. Of all the players who have played in at least five games that went into crunch time, only the all-conquering Henny Reistad has scored more (1.4). But overall, Pletikosic has even scored the most crunch time goals — 11. She also converted a strong 84.6 per cent of her attempts.
Overall, Podravka are particularly strong when it comes to finishing, as they converted 68.1 per cent of their non-penalty shots, the third-best number. They are also the only team in the top six of both turnovers (8.5 per 50 possessions) and second chances (after 21.1 per cent of all missed shots).
On the defensive end they concede 21.4 goals per 50 possessions. Four teams rank better in this respect, but in the net difference between goals scored per 50 possessions and goals conceded per 50 possessions in crunch time, no one comes close to Podravka. With +8.6 they clearly rank first, while over the whole game their net difference is even slightly negative with -0.5. So, they seem to be able to flip a switch in the crucial minutes when the game is on the line.
Still only average
Nevertheless, Podravka’s success rate in crunch time is smaller than it may seem: Only 11 points resulted from their 12 crunch time games. Despite a good performance and catching up in crunch time, they lost several close games.
However, the 0.92 points per crunch time game still were clearly better than the 0.67 points per game from their three games that didn’t go into crunch time. This difference of +0.25 points is the sixth-best among all 16 teams that have played EHF Champions League this season.
Even if they put up such great numbers in crunch time, they don’t belong among the best overall teams. This is because top teams are also characterised by not even having to go into crunch time, but closing the bag beforehand or at least going into crunch time with a lead.
Of the four teams that went straight through to the quarter-finals, Team Esbjerg, Györi Audi ETO KC, and Odense Håndbold saw 38.5 per cent or fewer of their games go into crunch time. Only FTC-Rail Cargo Hungaria are an outlier, with second-highest share after Podravka with 71.4 per cent. We will soon find out how far they can go in the EHF Champions League this season.
