(Reporter): Hello, everyone, this is your action news reporter with all the news that is news across the nation, on the scene at the volleyball court. There seems to have been some disturbance here. Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?
(Witness): Yeah, I did. I’s standin’ over there by the club parents, and here he come, writin’ ups a storm with Excel sheets and everthin’, prolly wrote it nekkid as a jay bird. And I hollered over t’John Kessel an’ I said, “Don’t look, John!” but it’s too late, he’d already read it.
Okay–for those of you too young to get the reference up above…that’s ripping off a Ray Stevens song called (shockingly) “The Streak“.
So last week I wrote up something VB related on the importance of scoring 4 points consecutively. Don’t want to leave me here? That’s cool. Click here and you’ll open up that first article. I’ll wait here for you.
Stop (hammer time)–four disclaimers…
*If you are looking for absolutes, you need to go somewhere else. There is an exception to everything, whether it is volleyball, nutrition, or automobiles (yes, there are well-made English automobiles, believe it or not).
*Commentary can’t apply to every level as provided here. Of course international men’s professional volleyball will have different results than Jr. High School ball. I’m not aiming for a single level–the aim is for (no guarantees) useful concepts or at least things that get YOU to think outside the box.
*If you want answers, I don’t even have those. What I have are questions, suggestions, and nothing more.
*I try and use simple math. Ideally all coaches can work with ‘normal’ numbers. Do teams all score 25/50/75% of the time? No, not at all. But unless you’re going to cough up money to me to do the actual number crunching, you’re going to get normal math (because the concept is what is important–the specifics you need are within your own team’s data).
Okay, so that’s out of the way.
I was thinking about streaking again yesterday, and as, per usual, because of baseball. It started on my drive back from a club staff dinner. Pat Hughes, the Cubs’ announcer, was talking about unconventional batting orders. That’s something that has come up a lot in the past 3 or 4 years. Tradition holds that you put a fast guy first, followed by a contact hitter, and then three power hitters. The weakest hitter goes 8th and the pitcher MUST go 9th.
Volleyball has similar rules when it comes to a lineup. How many coaches have been told that they MUST start with their best server serving first OR the setter at right back? Coaches do this because it is the way it has always been done.
You may not know me well–but understand, I will ask the question “Why?” until it bugs the living crap out of you. I despise ‘because I said so’ or ‘because that’s the way we’ve always done it.’ Those are lazy answers.
To be fair, tradition does come with reasoning–fast guy can steal, the next guy can hit or move him over to scoring position (fast guy’s hard to double up), and then the bashers drive him in. The pitcher’s worst, so he goes last. We can see the logic. With volleyball, three hitters gives more options than two, making it harder for the other team to block (and your setter is usually a weaker blocker anyways) while at younger levels, it is more difficult to pass a serve, so a great server will score a bunch of points.
The thing is–those may be the right strategies, but without an understanding of why, they may also be wrong strategies. Knowing why always helps you as a coach.
Baseball has moved away from that style of lineup. Finally, managers and front offices have realized that it doesn’t matter how you get on base–you just need to get there, so that being fast doesn’t matter if you aren’t on-base often (see: Billy Hamilton). That’s because they’ve also realized that if the mashers are jackin’ home runs, speed is irrelevant because runners are actually joggers–plenty of time to circle bases after a blast into the upper deck. Thus, the first reason for change in lineups.
The second with baseball–every game starts at the top of the lineup (duh, right?). The thing is, over the course of nine innings, a variable number of batters come to the plate–but any overage ALWAYS goes to the guys at the top of the batting order. You don’t notice this over the course of a game or even a week–but over the course of a full season, that can be a difference of up to 60-80 plate appearances (depending on the team’s offense, etc) between a hitter at the top of the order and the ones at the bottom. Would you rather Billy Hamilton get those 100 attempts or Bryce Harper or Kris Bryant? (Again, duh.) So teams have begun stacking the front end of their lineups more and more with their best hitters to insure they get those extra at-bats in later innings. More at bats for your better players–the change makes sense.
So now (yeah, yeah, finally, I know) we get to volleyball. Why don’t coaches consider things this way as well?
Look–I run a program with me part-time and a part-time assistant. That means a lot of stat-stuff doesn’t exist or I don’t take the time to log it. In the long run, match stats aren’t ‘important’ enough for me to keep play-by-play results for more than a week (if that). Sorry.
…so that means, I looked at matches I’ve ground through for other reasons. I stuck to the ones where the teams were balanced. Once again, blowouts aren’t useful–none of us worry about those. The difference between winning 25-8 and 25-12 is nada. But that same 4-pt swing between 23-25 and 25-23…now we’re cooking with gas! So I skipped out on anything where both teams didn’t reach 20 (or 10 for a deciding set)
The first step I took was going back and counting how many rotations we played per set. Against evenly matched teams, we tend to go 14-15 rotations/set. The deciding set matches went 8-9 rotations. (I’m going with 15 and 9 since those work well with ‘6’ rotations–we’re considering the principle, the mileage for your team will vary)
That means in a regular set, we’re going around 2.5 times and a deciding set, 1.5. Essentially, it means that the players you start at left front and left back are most likely to be your hitters at the end of a set–and the one at middle front is next in line for importance.
That all is a long-winded secondary point–if you’re playing a team equal/close to yours, you’re going to want to lead with your best lineup (which means you should lead with it all the time so you don’t get cute/screw up your players with unexpected adjustments).
Now back to today’s program. From the previous article, the critical factor in winning a set are runs of 4-pts. We win (or our opponents defeat us) whenever they put together a set’s longest streak and those are 99% likely to be at least 4 consecutive points. What I didn’t consider was the question of “Does it matter when that streak takes place? The start of a set? The end of it?”
It’s a big question. Mathematically, a point is a point, each no more significant in value than any another (though there is math out there that can show that not every point is equally valuable once you take into account another concept that baseball calls ‘leverage’).
Remember–this is absolutely a small sample size–but if we are able to put together a 4-pt run in the first 10 points of a set, we win the set roughly 95% of the time (presuming we do not permit an equal-sized streak during that time). Also of note, I’ve found that the team that gets to ‘5’ first wins 70-75% of matches regardless of streaks. Since matches start as 50-50 propositions, those are two important factoids that drastically alter the potential outcome of a match in your favor.
So?
So–that means if you can crank out that 4-pt run straight out of the gate, you’re increasing your chance of winning at least 50% before you’ve gone 2-3 rotations, regardless of anything else (like your opponent getting a run later on), or if you are LLCC, you put your chances up at 95%..
I also found that these runs tend to happen early in most sets. There are two points which provide context/an explanation:
- They ‘can’t’ happen at the end of a close match because of the point-limit that ends games. My girls may be ready to go on a 5-pt roll, but if we’re already up 23-21, that ends after just 2 points.
- When up 2-0 in the match, long runs seem to happen equally at the end as at the start. The only guess I have for this is because the losing team is ready to pack it in rather than try and fight back for the rest of the set and two more after it…easier to just get ice, get food, go home.
There’s another thing going on (I think). I don’t believe in momentum, but I do believe in pressure. If we score 25pts in 15 rotations, that’s an average of 1.67/rotation. So–if we start with a 4pt run and then are statistically average from that point on, our opponent has to be above average in every rotation played for the remainder of the set. That means they’ll take more risks, potentially leading to opportunities for more runs of points.
A run of points out of the gate is essential. But I think that the next place it becomes significant is the end of a close match–as previously mentioned, I know every point is equal in value, but I just can’t get past the baseball concept of leverage and the importance of points/streaks later on for a team’s success. (For the record, we won 60% of matches where we had a streak after 20-20…3 of 5, way too small of a sample to draw conclusions)
The short lesson of all this:
Don’t get caught up in “I must put my setter at right-back” or “She’s my ‘best’ hitter, so she’ll start at left front”. Look at the data for your team and figure out which are your best two rotations for scoring and putting together that 4+pt streak. You may find the rotation most likely to pick up those points are with that setter in the front row (who knows–only you know your team!). Lead with your rotations that score!
If you like this or it made you think, consider clicking that ‘Follow’ button. Otherwise, you’ll have to remember to come back next week rather than get a notice!
If you’re interested in more stuff on volleyball that rambles a little less :), check out Like Heck She Isn’t a Volleyball Player available on Amazon and other internet bookstores. It’s a collection of 27 essays on all parts of the most exciting indoor (and outdoor) sport in the world.
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