Blocking Profiles - Part 3

The Funnelers

Related:
Serving Profiles
Digging Profiles

Articles in this series:

Part 1 - Introducing The Data
Part 2 - Stuffmasters
Part 3 - The Funnelers
Part 4 - Touchy-Feely

The Funnelers

Here’s the ten teams who were relatively the best at not giving up bad touches, compared to the other aspects of blocking.

Keep in mind that these teams are not necessarily ranked from least-errors to most-errors, they are ranked by how much they better they were relative to other aspects of blocking at not getting tooled. So, for example, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Oregon were all among the 10-lowest E% teams, but also were high stuff and high touch teams. Remember the goal here is less to describe the teams who were “just good” and more to try to analyze strengths and weaknesses.

Winning And Losing

The correlation between not getting tooled and winning is pretty high. In fact, I was surprised by how high it was. And indeed, when you look at the above list, you can’t help but notice that 3 of those 10 teams were undefeated in-conference, and all from smaller-conferences. If I was a mid-major, I might be thinking a little less about how to maximize stuffing the ball and a little more about minimizing blocking errors. More on that later.

Let’s look at the other correlations I pulled that specifically relate to blocking:

0.16 - Stuff %
0.07 - Touch %
0.38 - Error %¹
0.35 - Block:Error Ratio

Last article, I went into some of the possible reasons for the differences in correlation between Stuff % and Error % and why it might not be saying as much as these numbers appear. Check it out if you didn’t read that piece yet. But still, the unavoidable conclusion is that avoiding getting tooled as a blocker is really important!

To Block Or Not To Block

I instruct at Gold Medal Squared seminars. During a Q&A period, I’ll always get a question like, “if I have a really small setter that can barely block, should I still have her block?”

There’s not a blanket answer to that question because we’re not in that gym and there’s a continuum of, “how small is small?” But to take an extreme example of a player who was literally only fingertips above the net. No, this player should not block. If you imagine the B:E ratio there… it essentially becomes 0. They’ll never stuff-block a ball and they will make some errors, so there’s almost nothing they can do to help the team. Anything they can do as a defender is more helpful than a 0-blocker.

And indeed, we can even find examples of teams at the very highest level pulling a small blocker who was unlikely to be helpful at the net.

Takeshita could get over the net a little, and would get block touches every now and then, but Japan would pull her whenever possible.

So for sure, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for a high school team to decide not to have a small setter block.

Personal anecdote time. Due to a series of unfortunate events, I once had to play Day 1 of a qualifier at 17 Open with only 4 hitters available, plus my normal top setter who could set a 5-1. I had 2 libero-types on the team, so this meant that one of them had to fill in the spot in the rotation and go across the frontrow. I opted to keep my normal 2 best outsides on the left and my best rightside on the right. I had my setter block right. I had one middle available and she played middle. I put my back libero in as the other “middle.” She was about 5’4” or so and could get maybe fingers above the tape. I opted to have her not block and just stay on the 10’ line and roam side-to-side for tips. The left and rightside blockers bunched in a touch more and they could block slow or easy-to-see-coming middles but they wouldn’t be able to block against a true perfect pass fast quick.

Well… we won all 3 matches that day. There were a few times where the team got a perfect pass and ran a true quick and we couldn’t touch it at the net and they slammed it down. Okay fine. But otherwise, we just single-blocked on the pins and dug a bunch of balls. My libero rover picked up all the tips and the defenders could hang back and dig. I’m not saying it was ideal and I was glad the next day when we had a 2nd middle available. But, it didn’t hurt us as much as you think. (At times I actually think it helped, because in one of the matches the other team’s coach was yelling at her setter to set middle so much they started setting middle on all these bad passes and then the middle just tipped out of most of them anyway.)

So, part of being good at blocking is not blocking!

But usually not by never blocking, but by reading the situation and knowing situations like:

I’m More Likely To Get Tooled

The flashy play here is most often seen in the pro men’s game where the blockers bring their hands down to avoid being tooled:

Often, your players will be able to decide earlier based on where the set is and how the hitter is approaching to the ball. Elite players deliberately aim for fingertips and modern replay systems that catch every touch incentivize blockers to avoid getting tooled in some of these situations. At the youth level, the danger is less a player deliberately trying to swing at the fingertips and more a player in a tough spot taking a wild swing that’s likely to go out of bounds… so don’t stick your hands up and let them tool you on the way out.

It’s An Easy Dig For My Teammates

When hitters are out-of-rhythm, it tends to create easy chances to dig. And weirdly, they are almost harder balls to stuff. The ultimate stuffable ball is also the same ball that’s hard to dig… the classic 50/50, on-the-tape, “trap set.” If you don’t block the trap set, it’s more likely to be a kill. If you do block it, it’s likely to get roofed straight down.

On the flip side, the out-of-rhythm stuff is easy to dig, but it’s also less likely to get stuffed because (a) there’s more space and time for coverage players to get in there and (b) a less powerful swing means the ball rebounds slower off the block, which is easier to cover.

So… easy for my teammates to dig + less likely to produce a stuff = maybe I should stay down instead.

I Can Get Into Transition

This links up with the previous idea, because I can’t worry about my own transition if I’m not confident that the ball will be dug. But a lot of middles take themselves out of the transition offense by attempting to block balls that are just going to be rolled over their heads anyway. Middles don’t get set much in transition and, even at the highest levels, rarely get set after blocking against the opposing outside hitter. I once analyzed this for professional women’s volleyball and found that middles were almost never set after an untouched zone 4 that they attempted to block.²

So if you have a really good middle, you might want her looking for chances to get down and get into transition.

Enjoy! Leave me some other situations where you think players can change their blocking strategy to avoid getting tooled or to do something more productive than blocking in situations where they are unlikely to block the ball.

1. Technically it’s a negative correlation, because fewer errors = more wins, but I think it’s just easier on the eyes to absorb them as positive correlations.

2. It happened less than once per match between both teams. Almost every middle transition attempt from zone 2 (thus, against the opposing outside) was either a block slowdown or a slide.