Previous posts on the 2024 Women’s NCAA Tournament:
And Then There Were 4 Part 1
And Then There Were 4 Part 2
Final 4 Preview
Final 4 Review
Louisville v Penn State (preview)
Well the whole tournament has played out exactly (the opposite) of how I predicted. First, Louisville and Penn State took down Pitt and Nebraska. Then, Penn State beat Louisville in front of a (semi) hostile crowd to take home the championship. Some great volleyball and I’ll have a analysis on the tournament as a whole to come, but, given that it’s Christmas Eve, I just wanted to drop a few quick thoughts on the championship match.
Triangle Stats
Well I guess I did get this prediction right in my preview article.
So where am I leaning? I think whoever wins the Transition battle is going to take the match, and I’m going to go with Louisville and the home court advantage. Which means you should start betting on the Nittany Lions right now.
If you predict your own mis-prediction, does that mean you predicted correctly?
As I expected, there wasn’t a lot of difference in the Serve/Pass and First Ball battle. Louisville had a small edge there. Penn State was more aggressive, missed more serves, and picked up a few more aces. Louisville was in-system more and served in more.
But the Serve/Pass battle didn’t seem to affect the First Ball phase much. Both teams ended up with nearly identical FBK and First Ball Efficiency numbers. The phase of the game that determined the match was the Transition Battle.
Transition
Penn State outhit Louisville in transition, 0.293 to 0.173. And the big gap wasn’t necessarily Louisville making too many unforced errors or Penn State blocking them off the court. Louisville got dug a lot and Penn State didn’t. Let’s break things down a little farther.
Penn State
92 - Transition Attempts
38 - Transition Kills
7 - Transition Times Blocked
4 - Transition Unforced Errors
43 - Transition Continues
Louisville
71 - Transition Attempts
19 - Transition Kills
5 - Transition Times Blocked
4 - Transition Unforced Errors
43 - Transition Continues
So we can see here that 47% of Penn State’s transition attempts were Continues- where there was no kill/block/error and the rally… continued. On the flip side, 61% of Louisville transition attempts continued the rally. Now, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with managing the game and being low error. But it’s a whole lot better to terminate the ball.
Something I noticed when watching the match were the number of interactions with the block. Rewatching on video, I count the following for Louisville:
Louisville Transition Block Interactions
14 Continues
6 Kills
5 Times Blocked
So for Louisville, 25/71 transition attempts interacted with the block, which is 35%. That’s a fairly low number. In particular, in the 4th and final set where the Penn State defense really started to smother them, I count just 4/13 swings interacting with the block.
Let’s contrast that to Penn State:
Penn State Transition Block Interactions
22 Continues
16 Kills
7 Times Blocked
45/92 = nearly 50% of Penn State’s transition swings interacted with the block. Just off the eyeball test, it looked pretty clearly that Penn State was attacking the Louisville block and making them block them.
And indeed, overall for the match, Louisville outblocked Penn State 13 to 12… but Penn State had 34 kills off the Louisville block while Louisville had 18 off the Penn State block. You could take that as the Penn State block being more disciplined, but I would also credit the Penn State attackers (and obviously Mruzik in particular) for hunting the block and scoring in a variety of ways.
I’ll have a video-heavy post later in the week with some plays and analysis from the tournament as a whole, but I wanted to get this post out before my wife kills me Christmas Eve festivities start in the Trinsey household. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody and congrats to a fantastic Penn State team for bringing another championship home to Happy Valley.