Most of September on SmarterVolley has been spent looking at Sideout Offense from the perspective of different pass qualities.
Now as we get into October, we’ll start looking at preventing our opponents from siding out, what we’ll call the Break Point phase. Just as we broke down Sideout by Pass Quality, we’ll do the same for Break Point.
In Part 1 of this series, we looked at defending Opponent In-System Sideout. Now, we’ll look at when your opponents are in a medium pass or “Semi-System” situation.
Why Look At Break Point By Pass Quality?
It’s important to look at Break Point By Pass Quality because you want to have a plan for each situation. This is how you build volleyball IQ. Volleyball IQ is this elusive concept that we probably have as coaches (due to our experience), but our players probably lack- due to their inexperience. What Volleyball IQ means is probably something like making the right decision based on how the play is unfolding.
We, as coaches, understand that when the other team is Out-of-System, they are more likely to tip or shoot the ball, they are more likely to go to the big part of the court, and we don’t need to get super dug-in on defense. We also want to be more conservative with our blocking, not wanting our block to get used when our defenders are in a good position to dig anyway. On the flip side, when the other team is In-System, they are more likely to set middle, more likely to set the ball fast if they go to the pins, hitters are likely to use sharper angles and attack toward the edges of the court, and our block probably needs to take some chances to stuff some balls because the digs are harder.
As the level gets higher, there also starts to become some decisions about, what is physically possible in this situation. For example, certain teams set Slides so fast that your middle blocker cannot realistically take a full X3 crossover swing block move. You may decide that, when they are in-system, we will always X2. These decisions vary a lot by level and the capability of both your team and your opponents, so I don’t want to get too into specifics on this. But these are decisions you need to make as a coach and having a framework for when those decisions will occur helps communicate situational awareness to your players.
How Often Is The Other Team Semi-System?
This depends on level. In the NCAA Women’s Power 5, 30% Semi-System is about average. A lot of this does depend on how you grade it, but I think a decent ballpark for most higher-levels is about 50/30/20 In-System/Semi-System/Out-of-System. Generally there’s more Semi-System (Medium, 2-point, R!) than Out-of-System (Bad, 1-point, R-).
At the High School or Juniors level, the stronger teams will be in that 50% In-System ballpark, but lower-level Juniors play is generally well-below 50% In-System. For example, I have stats from a U-15 club team I coached lying around and our opponents were 25% In-System against us, and we were not a National Championship-caliber club team by any means. Actually, the fact that we weren’t an Open-level team is why our opponent passing was so low! If we were playing top-50 teams, they would be passing closer to 40-50% InSys, even if we were a very good serving team.
What this means is that, for most High School and Juniors teams, instead of 50/30/20, the ratios are more like 30/50/20 or 30/40/30. Either way, instead of thinking they’re going to be In-System half of the time, I’m now thinking, they’re going to be Semi-System half of the time.
What’s Important For Semi-System Block/Defense?
I think that the more In-System the other team is, the more you are relying on your block, and the more Out-of-System they are, the more you are relying on defense. This might not be true at the highest-level of men’s volleyball, where such a high proportion of balls are touched by the block OoS, but in women’s volleyball, I think that’s a decent paradigm.
This makes Semi-System an interesting blend. A quality team is going to take big rips, but, since the pass has reduced their options, you still have a fighting chance to compete on the block/defense end. To me, Semi-System then becomes all about quality fundamentals, specifically:
Read blocking
Blocking footwork and handwork
Defensive positioning and posture
Digging fundamentals
I’m a huge read block fan. As I said last week:
In my ideal world, our blockers are just going to stay in a perfect bunch read and react to everything as they see it.
This might be hard to do In-System, and at most higher-levels, you need to have some tactics in place to help your team out. But in Semi-System? Oh yeah, we’re staying in that great bunch read and we’re going to be good enough with our eyes to attack the attacker and go get her with some dynamic blocking moves.
When I train read blocking with drills like Ball-Setter-Ball-Hitter, I like to start with blocking against Medium Pass situations rather than In-System. Beginning blockers (and this is relative to your level, so your NCAA blockers can still be beginners) can break down when facing a good In-System offense and the learning actually slows down because the difficulty is too high. But when you get the ball passed 11’ off the net where the setter is balanced, but the middle is eliminated, your blockers can stand there and read both ways and start getting good at that.
And if we’re making good reads, then we can get to the point of attack and reach across the net. Reach to the baseline is a key I love.
When I think about defense, I think about Positioning and Posture. Positioning is where we stand. Posture is how we stand. You should have a lot of control over this in Semi-System. Stand in exactly the right spot in exactly the right posture. Then go make the dig. If you didn’t catch the sessions I posted with the defensive coordinators from UK and UW, check them out here. Lots of good info on both Positioning and Posture there.
And of course, we want to have good digging mechanics. We want to have a digging toolbox. That toolbox needs to contain things like the Double Push.
How Do You Evaluate Your Semi-System Block/Defense?
The most important overall metric for Semi-System Block/Defense is, of course, your Break Point % or your Opponent Sideout %, whichever way you like looking at it. Personally, I prefer looking at Opponent Sideout, because I like putting them side-by-side:
If I’m a NCAA D1 team, and I use this ballpark of 67%/60%/50% as average levels of Sideout for Perfect/Good/Bad (3/2/1 on a 3-point scale), then I can assess both offense and defense in that way. Since we’re looking at Break Point specifically, I’d see that we were about average defensively when they were In-System, about average defensively when they were in Semi-System, but below average when they were Out-of-System. That allows me to assess and prioritize training moving forward.
One wrinkle in this is that Sideout is affected by Transition, whereas FBSO is not. Because of that, for an individaul match, I also like to look at First Ball Kill % by Pass Quality. This just helps check to see if there was something weird in the Transition data. If the other team only has 16 Semi-System receptions in a match, 3 Transition rallies could drastically swing the Sideout %. So just make sure you don’t have small-sample weirdness going on and check the FBK numbers too.
The above applies to all situations, but what about Semi-System specifically? Here, I’m looking at a couple things:
Our overall blocking numbers. A lot of stuff blocks come in Semi-System situations. Semi-System is sort of good enough to take big rips but not good enough to create gaps in the block. So, there’s great blocking opportunities. Are we blocking 1 ball per set or 2? If our blocking numbers are low, this is probably hurting us in Semi-System.
Subjectively, what does the quality of our block look like? Is our footwork good? Do our blockers see the set and adjust their lineup accordingly? Set’s wide: get wide. Set’s inside: stay inside. Is our handwork good? Do we press and reach to the baseline or are we up in the air waving at the ball?
Specifically: how well do we block and dig crosscourt heat? This is the number-1 way to be bad in Semi-System defense. First of all, is the other team just crushing the ball inside your middle blockers at will? Assuming it isn’t just a pure physical mismatch, many middles go straight up and/or reach to the hitter and let the ball go underneath their block, instead of reaching across the net to the baseline and stopping that crosscourt shot. This is especially important when the set is inside. Never get beat cross on an inside set! Beyond the block, how well do our left-back defenders handle that crosscourt heat. On average, crosscourt attacks are dug at a higher rate than line attacks. Make sure this is true for your team. If you’re in NCAA women’s volleyball and the other team is 50% kill when they hit crosscourt, you’re going to have a tough time winning lots of matches.
There we have it, a few thoughts on stopping your opponents in Semi-System. This can often be the entry point into getting really good at block/defense, so I often start here. In-System is tough to stop no matter how good you are, and Out-of-System is often more about opponent errors, whereas Semi-System really allows your team to start asserting themselves on block/defense and is a test of how you’re progressing.