Beach Week: Transition
This week is beach week. I dedicate the first three weeks of each month to the indoor side of the game and reserve the fourth week for beach-focused discussion. If you’re not interested in beach volleyball, feel free to skip this one.
I’ve talked about using the Triangle framework on the beach in previous posts. December’s Beach Week focused more on Terminal Serving; in January we focused on First Ball, and this week we’ll look at the Transition game on the beach.
Let’s look at a couple of charts:
Pretty straight forward.
These are two different datasets. The 2021 data is a little choppier because it’s exclusively from the Nationals at Gulf Shores, whereas the 2019 includes regular season matches, so it’s a bigger sample set.
Unlike what we saw in First Ball Kill, there doesn’t appear to be a huge difference between the two sample sets. In both cases, winning 42% of the Transition rallies led to winning the match about 20% of the time. And in both cases, winning 58% of the Transition rallies led to winning the match about 80% of the time.
Let me back up and explain what you’re seeing here.
Transition Win %
We’ve broken the Triangle down to three parts before.
Terminal Serves
First Ball Points
Transition Points
What these charts are showing are, “of all the rallies that went into the Transition phase, how many of them did you win?” It’s not showing Kill % or efficiency in Transition, it’s just showing what proportion of Transition rallies you won.
I like this statistic, because there’s some different skills at work than scoring in First Ball. There’s digging, but also digging for quality. There’s attacking, but the setting is different in Transition than it is in First Ball. And it feels like a human-scale number to me. Players can understand that if we go 50% in Transition, then we’re basically at a wash with the opponent. If we can win more than 50/50, we’re giving ourselves an advantage.
What Proportion Is Played In Each Phase?
At 2021 Nationals:
19% Terminal Serves
53% First Ball Points
28% Transition Points
We know that First Ball has the biggest influence on winning, because it’s as big as the other two categories put together.
We saw from the First Ball post that 2021 Nationals played a more First Ball-oriented game than in 2019. So it probably shouldn’t surprise you that 2021 Nationals also played a less Transition-oriented game. If more balls are getting killed in First Ball, it leaves fewer Transition rallies.
Does The Pairs Level Matter?
Here’s that breakdown by 1s and 2s pairs:
18% Terminal Serves
54% First Ball Points
28% Transition Points
And by 4s and 5s pairs:
18% Terminal Serves
54% First Ball Points
28% Transition Points
Interesting! And somewhat unexpected to me. My guess before running the numbers would have been that 1s and 2s would play a slightly more First Ball-oriented game than 4s and 5s.
Did Transition Wins Predict Match Wins?
This appears to be pretty stable.
In 2019, teams that won the Transition battle won the match 72% of the time.
In 2021, teams that won the Transition battle won the match 72% of the time.
That was also a little surprising to me. My guess was that, with slightly fewer rallies being played in Trans, that Trans would predict match wins a bit less in 2021. So the importance didn’t drop off. Here’s another way to look at it:
A typical 2-set match might see 78 total points played. (21-18, 21-18), which means there’s about 22 rallies that go into the Transition phase. If you’re going 50/50 with the other team, you’re each winning 11 rallies. Winning the Transition phase 12-10 puts you around 54% Transition Win, which puts you somewhere between 60-70% likely to win a match.
Winning the Transition phase 13-9 puts you over 58% Transition win, which puts you over 80% likely to win a match.
Pretty crazy!
There is, of course, plenty of compounding factors to this. In a given match, a team that wins Transition also tends to win both other factors. Good teams are good at lots of things. But I find the training implications of this pretty powerful. If you’re dead-even with the other team, and you can turn two Transition rallies a match from a loss to a win, you significantly increase your chances of winning the match. Just 2 out of 22.
Let me know what your takeaways are in the comments section.