Simple Coach's recent podcast, where he discussed the data on ties, made me wonder if conference-level data would show more variation. For example, NESCAC is very competitive, has more strong teams historically, and typically gets more bids to the NCAA tournament. SCIAC, by contrast, in Region X, is usually more top heavy and in many years only gets one automatic bid to the NCAA tournament and that's it. You can develop hypotheses that would argue there should be more ties in either one (e.g., (1) ties are more prevalent in top heavy conferences as weaker teams try to hold on or they are more prevalent in conferences that are strong from top to bottom since no team can breakthrough for a score, or, conversely (2) where you have to win to get a chance for a Pool C bid, there will be fewer ties and where you need to just hold serve to stay in contention for a Pool C bid, there will be more ties).
So, I compared the ties and percentages in NESCAC and SCIAC for 2022 and 2021, covering all games involving their teams, including out of conference (this was a rough late night exercise, so I may have miscounted ties/games by a couple):
2022 2021
NESCAC 32 ties/133 games (24.06%) 12/133 (9.02%)
SCIAC 23/93 (24.73%) 7/96 (7.29%)
Surprisingly, at least to me, the percentages were very similar. Perhaps the variables both contribute to lots of ties (top heavy conferences produce ties among the strong and weak teams and balanced conferences produce ties among the equally matched teams). Alternatively, maybe it's a coastal thing
My guess is that if I compared more conferences, I would find some variation. The hypothesis is that the decision to go for a tie in certain cases might be cultural among coaches and players and some areas of the country might not make that strategic choice. I didn't have time to test it, but I did take a quick look just at 2022 for the SCAC in the Southwest and they only had 17 ties and a 15.32% tie rate.
