August $7 Study

Catching up...

This spring I took a detour from my usual analytic-heavy content on SmarterVolley to focus on more qualitative aspects of coaching. To make sure I still got you all your fix of stats I launched the $7 Study feature where once a month I include some statistical research I’ve done. The goal is to give you a concise summary with a couple clear takeaways that you can digest in 10 minutes or less.

It’s also my pitch to you free subscribers! Hey, I put out a lot of content, and a lot of it is for free. If you’re a free subscriber and you read everything I put out and listen to all my podcast appearances, etc, you’ll pretty much get a feel for my way of approaching the game. But, if you’re busy and want to get right to some core takeaways, you’ll like these $7 Studies. In 10 minutes or less you’ll get at least one clear takeaway for your team, supported by evidence.

Previous $7 Studies include:

February: What attack patterns are most effective?
March: How effective are the blockers at each position?
April: How do setting choices affect opponent transition efficiency?
May: How does Make Them Play correlate to winning?
June: Does serve location influence where passers pass?
July: Do setters influence where passers pass?
August: Should passers consider where the setter is?

Considering I released June and July on August 17, I’ll consider getting the August study pushed out by Sep 8 a step in the right direction. So here we go.

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Should Passers Pass To The Setter?

In the last 2 studies, we looked at the interaction of a couple factors that influenced where passes end up. We saw that:

1. Where the ball is served to influences where the ball is passed to.

2. Where the setter releases from doesn’t appear to influence where the ball is passed from, at least not at the P5 level.

Now, we’ll look at whether attack efficiency by pass location is influenced by where the setter comes from. Broadly speaking: does the setter releasing from the right side of the court make her worse at setting balls passed to 3/4? And does the setter releasing from the left side of the court make her worse at setting balls passed to 2?

Let’s look at a couple pieces of data and find out:

Attack efficiency after Setter-4 release on the left. Attack efficiency after Setter-1 release on the right.

Well, that’s pretty clear. I think it’s safe to say that yes, teams attack more effectively in some areas of the court as opposed to others depending on what rotation they are in. (Although: I’ll note below, this might be due to something other than where the setter is coming from.)

The left image shows attack efficiency after the setter releases from zone 4 and the right image shows attack efficiency after the setter releases from zone 1.¹ While not every subzone is skewed by these results, there’s some interesting trends:

Balls Passed To Zone 2
24% Attack Efficiency in Setter-1
20% Attack Efficiency in Setter-4

There’s a strong possibility that this is because Zone 2 is quite a bit farther for a setter to release to when they are in Setter-4 compared to when they are in Setter-1. There’s also a possibility that this attack efficiency is lowered because it’s difficult for the slide attacker to get behind the setter as she is running across the court and into Zone 2. But really, that’s two ways of saying the same thing, isn’t it? Either way, your rotation formation is affecting the ability to sideout.

Balls Passed To Zone 8²
18% Attack Efficiency in Setter-1
11% Attack Efficiency in Setter-4

I chalk this one up to the release mechanics as well. When setters make the long run in Setter-4, it’s a less natural move for them to then come off the net and pivot or square back up. In Setter-1 it’s a little more natural.

Another factor here is that most setters starting position is very close to the net in Setter-4. So after they enter, they are still often very close to the net. Here’s a look at 4 representative releases from the K-State and Nebraska setters in their recent match.

The Nebraska setter is getting a touch farther, in part because her front-row outside attacker is out of serve receive. That’s a nice alignment if you have a passing opposite (or DS) as it makes the setter entry quite a bit easier. You can see how how either setter, but particularly the K-State setter is going to struggle with the pass back in zone 2, and how neither setter is in an ideal position to come off the net into Zone 8.

Now let’s look at their Setter-1 releases.

It’s pretty easy to see here that these setters are in much better position to get to a ball passed into Zone 8.

Conclusions

So, going back to the question posed at the beginning, does this data suggest that passers should try to pass the ball toward the setter?