Championship Preview + Watch Party

Wisconsin vs Nebraska. It all comes down to this for the 2021 National Championship. Volleytalk is debating right now whether, “it’s tough to beat a team 3 times.” We looked at the season profiles for both Wisconsin and Nebraska in the semifinal previews, so check them out if you haven’t.

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Hey everybody, I’ll have the first section above the paywall, with the rest of this post reserved for premium subscribers. Consider subscribing if you’re enjoying this and want to see more analysis. As a bonus, I’m going to have a subscriber-only Watch Party for the Championship on Saturday. Join me and other Smarter Volley enthusiasts for commentary that goes deeper than, “hitting percentage is sort of like batting average,” (to be fair, it kind of is…) and without needing to be told for the 100th time that the teams play to 25 points and the player wearing the different color jersey is called the libero. (Something worth remembering… the announcers know this too. This is stuff that’s coming from the producers. Let ESPN know that you’re not a random person who stumbled upon a volleyball match for the first time; you’re a volleyball fan who knows this stuff!)

I’ll send the link out about an hour before the start of the match.

Rock - Paper - Scissors

I want this to be less of a “predict who wins,”¹ post and more of a, “if this team wins, what would it look like… if that team wins, what would it look like?” sort of post.

In my Spotlight post, I talked about approaching strengths and weaknesses from a coaching perspective. The general philosophy I outlined in that post can be summed up as:

Early in the season, I want to discover a team’s strengths and weaknesses, and encourage them to work on their weaknesses. I like the idea of, “Can you win a match this way? What about this other way?” Late in the season, I like for a team to solidify their strengths. I like the message of, “This is who you are; this is what you can rely on when the going gets tough.”

So if I’m looking at this matchup, I’m saying, “what are the strengths that each team is trying to impose on the other?”

Fortunately for ease-of-article-writing, the strengths of these two teams are pretty clear. Wisconsin is a dominant offense team and Nebraska has a fantastic defense.

Wisconsin was #6 in the country with a 0.296 hitting efficiency.² Looking at Big 10-only stats, Wisconsin was #1 with a 0.269 efficiency. (30-point Big 10 premium!). Nebraska was at 0.227 in Big 10 play.

Nebraska was #9 in the country with a 0.147 opponent hitting efficiency and #1 in the Big 10, holding opponents to that same 0.147 in conference play as well. Adjusting for conference strength, it’s reasonable to call Nebraska the “best defensive team in the country,” as Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield did.³

It’s not just Nebraska’s defense. It’s their Serve-Pass game as well. Nebraska is likely the best passing team in the country. The NCAA doesn’t publish useful passing statistics, but my manual browsing of Volleymetrics passing statistics, adjusted for conference quality puts Nebraska as the best passing team in the country. I shared this image in my previous post:

This is the Big 10, plus Louisville and Pitt. The farther you are to the bottom-right, the better. Nebraska is an outlier in both passing accuracy and not getting aced.

So Nebraska is an elite serve-pass team and an elite defensive team. Wisconsin is a powerhouse offensive team and (as footnoted) an elite block/defense team as well.

Do these team profiles suggest anything about how this match will play out?

Something that works in Wisconsin’s favor is that they generally don’t rely on aces or high-pressure serving to win. In my Nebraska - Pitt matchup preview, I suggested:

First, if I’m playing Nebraska, I think I need to serve the ball in as much as possible. They are such a good passing team that I think the benefit of serving aggressively just might not be there.

That approach is somewhat baked-in already for Wisconsin. Their servers are among the least-terminal around. They are going to put the ball in play and rely on their block/defense.

In terms of the offensive and defensive matchups, there’s nothing to suggest that an elite offensive team has an edge against an elite defensive team or vice versa. That’s going to be down to individual matchups. Let’s look at those next.