Beach Week: "3 More" From The World Champs

Diving a little deeper...

This week is Beach Week at Smarter Volley. I dedicate the first three weeks of each month to indoor volleyball and the fourth week to the beach game. If you are purely here for indoor volleyball, you might want to skip this one.

The theme of the next 3 Beach Weeks is Winter Wrap-Up. Each week I’ll take a look at 1 of 3 major championships: FIVB Men’s World Championships, FIVB Women’s World Championships, and the NCAA National Championship. In particular, I’m looking at what the Triangle relationships were in these different competitions and seeing if we can draw any trends.

Last week, we looked at some numbers from the 2022 FIVB Men’s World Championships.

Beach Week: World Champs Triangles

We’ll dive a little deeper into a few things and look at some clips as well. Here’s 3 More Takeaways + 3 Plays I Loved. This email will get gif-heavy, so you be better-off viewing it in your browser.

Takeaway 1: Transition Blocking = Wins

The number of Transition Blocks isn’t drastically different on a raw basis between winning teams and losing teams. 0.6 v 0.3 doesn’t seem huge. And it’s not. But… on a percentage basis, it’s a huge difference. And you see it when you just look at the raw data themselves. In about 2/3 of matches, the losing team put up a 0 for Transition blocks. The winning teams aren’t ever going to stuff 3 balls in Transition, but just picking up that 1, sometimes 2, steal blocks in Transition makes a difference.

I think sometimes the psychological effect of blocking is overplayed (no sir, your block doesn’t get credit for every attacking error the opponent makes), but I think there’s a touch of truth here. If the other team has a little more respect for your block in Transition, they can’t swing as aggressively into the court in Transition, when they often don’t get as good of a look at the court.

Takeaway 2: It’s Hard To Get Aces At High Levels