2021 NCAA Sweet 16 Breakdown
Minnesota advances by winning the Terminal Serve game...
I’ve been talking a lot about Terminal Serving this week. I broke down the concept on Monday and shared some info on its correlation to winning. On Tuesday I shared Aceball, a favorite drill of mine to highlight the importance of Terminal Serving. On Wednesday myself and about 15 of the fastest commenters of Smarter Volley sat down with Riley Salmon and had a Q&A workshop with him on passing.
The NCAA women’s tournament was in their round of 16 yesterday, which meant 8 matches. What does that mean? To quote… myself:
Overall, when a team won Terminal Serves, they won the match about 2/3 of the time. But no category of the game stands alone. Winning only Terminal Serves (and therefore, losing both First Ball and Transition) only wins you the match about 15% of the time. Compared to winning only First Ball or only Transition, which led to wins 29% and 38% of the time, respectively. So this is an important aspect of the game (and probably more important for underdogs) but you still have to do more than just serve for aces to win high-level volleyball.
If Terminal Serves can carry a match for you 15% of the time, then in a set of 4 matches (like the upcoming Regional Finals), it’s about a 50/50 shot if a team will win Terminal Serves while losing the other two categories, and in a sample of 8 matches, we’re talking more like 75%. When I planned out my content calendar for the first few months of this newsletter, I slotted Terminal Serves into this week and crossed my fingers that we’d see something interesting play out in one of those 8 matches.
And, turns out, we did.
Minnesota and Baylor are two of the best programs out there. I’ve learned a ton from their staffs; either directly or by just watching their film. I was running a club practice and held it up for 8 minutes so the girls could watch the end of the 5th set on the tv in the gym. (Who needs to watch me demo hitting footwork when you can just watch Samedy and Pressley smash balls amirite?)
The Numbers
219 Total Points
111 Minnesota
108 Baylor
29 Terminal Serves
19 Minnesota
10 Baylor
190 Live Rallies
92 Minnesota
98 Baylor
So this is one of those weird scenarios that pops up in about 1 out of every 6 matches. Baylor scores more points when volleyball happens, but Minnesota wins the match, helped by a significant boost in the Terminal Serve game.
Those 29 serves break out into:
6 Baylor Aces1
12 Baylor Serve Errors
7 Minnesota Aces2
4 Minnesota Serve Errors
One thing to note is that’s an exceptionally low SE rate by Minnesota. 4 errors in 111 is well-below average, although not atypical for a Minnesota program that has always focused on being low-error. Producing 7 aces off 4 errors is what makes a big difference.
It’s also worth noting that all 7 of Minnesota’s aces came in the 3 sets that they won, and they only had 1 service error in those 3 sets. So the effect that Terminal Serving had on this match is even more amplified than those totals suggest.
Here are the aces from Minnesota:
When I watch this match, I don’t see a team serving for aces. Most of those aces are passable balls. The 5-to-5 fading toward the left sideline is a pretty tough ball for any passer. But what I see producing this strong result is more of a “consistent good” philosophy. Don’t try for great serves, but a lot of good serves on your opponent and keep at it until they make some mistakes.
My understanding is that has always been one of Hugh’s core tenants at Minnesota. Consistent good, low-error, smart, fundamental volleyball. To me, that’s been one of the big emphases of the Carl McGown coaching tree. I also see it in the style of Brazilian volleyball.
On the flip side, I’ve hosted a couple sessions from coaches who have a more aggressive style. Dan Fisher from Pitt is one that comes to mind and another is Ryan McGuyre. The establishment of both of those programs as new powerhouses is testament to the effectiveness of a more aggressive style that’s a bit more tolerant of errors. In this single match, Minnesota’s low-error approach ended up winning out.
It’s not even a fair criticism of Baylor to say they were high-error from the service line in this match. They missed 12 of 108 serves, which is close to an average error rate. 6% ace and 11% error is not usually going to find you far behind in Terminal Serves, it’s just that Minnesota was unusually productive in this match.
The Wisconsin - Minnesota matchup will be an interesting one in the Regional Final. Wisconsin also has also been more of a serve-it-in team this year; both teams were under 8% error in the Big 10 season and both were on the low end of aces as well. Actually, Wisconsin matches had the lowest proportion of Terminal Serves of any team in the Big 10. They don’t serve many aces, don’t miss many serves, and don’t get aced very often.
What does that mean if you’re either one of these teams? To me it’s more of a strength-on-strength matchup than an opposing strengths matchup. If I was either one of those, I’d be looking to try figure out how to get an edge in Transition. There’s going to be a lot of balls in play. I’d be really scouting things like (1) who can we tip on? (2) when can our setter dump and when is their setter going to dump? (3) what transition situations can our blockers take a chance to release to go stuff block a ball?
I know I’ll be watching this one closely! Drop a comment if you have a prediction!
I think there’s a pretty good argument that their first ace should be scored as a setting error and their second is either a setting error or an overpass kill. In the interest of standardization, I’ll just (gulps nervously) trust the Volleymetrics data on this one. If you take those two aces away, it actually slants things more toward Minnesota winning the TS game, so the theme of the article still stands.
In additional news from the Nitpicking Volleymetrics Department: I would not have scored the ball at 1-4 in set 2 as an ace.