How To Beat: Pittsburgh

First step: extra finger tape

And then there were 4! This NCAA tournament has been incredible so far. As one friend put it:

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to watch any of it live! I was running a private clinic for a club. The good news is (1) this gives me a chance to plug the public Offensive Concepts event this weeked in Wilmington, DE and (2) I’ve been able to catch up on the always-wonderful Volleymetrics machine.

Also, as this friend notes, I’ve been fortunate to have coaches from all the Final Four teams on SmarterVolley for coaching workshops!

Dave co-hosted our Q&A with Marv.
Alfee on Defensive Training
DBK on Setting
And… unfortunately Dan Fisher’s session isn’t available. Blame early-2020 understanding of how Zoom works.

So the lesson clearly is: become a premium subscriber to Smarter Volley and you too can learn how to coach exactly as good as any of these coaches in the Final Four. It works EXACTLY like that.

And speaking of the Final Four, I’ll spend some time before these matches looking at each of the teams and breaking down some of their profiles and what I would do if I was faced with the tough task of trying to beat any of them.

If you want to see the profiles from the other 3 teams, I’ll link them here as I release them.

Louisville
San Diego
Texas

Pittsburgh

Triangle Profile

I’m using the Public Triangles method for this, which is a billion times faster than downloading dvw files from every match for each of these 4 teams, and sometimes the default dvw pulls from VM can miss a point or two here or there. But it’s all going to be pretty darn close, especially when we’re looking at a full season’s worth of data.

So, what are my initial thoughts?

First: Pitt is really really good. Next: So are the other teams in Final Four. Cool. So let’s look at the share of the game that each team plays in each phase:

The main difference that stands out between Louisville and Pitt is that Pitt plays more in Transition and they have a lower share of Terminal Serves. Let’s look at how the Terminal Serving breaks down.

A few things stand out. First: teams miss a lot of serves against Louisville and Texas. They were the top-2 in “Opponent Service Error” last year as well. What’s going on!? I think there’s some element of, “these two teams are really good offensively, so teams serve aggressively. But also, teams missed 9% of serves against Wisconsin 2 years in a row. I doubt they are less intimidated by Wisconsin.

But interestingly enough, I’ve long said that one of the most important teaching tools with high school players is to remind them, “let them serve out,” especially when you have a tough server at the line. There’s nothing worse in high school volleyball than some kid rocketing the ball 43mph and your passser shanks the ball that was headed 6’ out of bounds. It was in my How To Beat: Louisville article. So maybe, “let them serve out,” is an underrated concept in NCAA volleyball as well.

In terms of Triangle success, Pitt dominated the Terminal Serve game this year. 6.3% Ace with only 6.3% Error is going to dominate that category every time. I noted last year that Pitt’s serving philosophy was much more conservative than their attacking philosophy. I think that’s serving them well. Personally, I favor the same: pretty conserative serving and pretty aggressive attacking. Challenge the passer and challenge the blocker.

If you want to beat Pitt, I think you have the keep the Serve/Pass game as even as possible while maximizing your ability to stop them in First Ball. Let’s look at my 3 priorities for How To Beat Pitt:

1. Keep The Serve/Pass Game Even

Pitt serves in a lot and they don’t get aced a lot. They aren’t quite 2021-Nebraska good at ace prevention, but they are the least-aced team in the Final Four. Pitt has 3 losses. In 2 of them (Louisville and Towson), they lost the Serve/Pass game. Pitt has won Terminal Serving in almost every match they’ve played so far; they rely on that area to give them a small buffer. You might not count on beating them in this phase, but I think there’s some things you can do to even the score in this phase.

First: realize that they are going to serve in a lot. Of their 6 likely servers on Thursday, none are 10% error and only Gray¹ is over 7%. Pitt has run some different personnel, but with both Flood and Ennis in the serving rotation, they have 3 (!!) servers at over 50% Break Point in the line-up. None of these servers are hyper-aggressive but they are all very effective.

Okay great, they are going to serve in a lot, so what do we do about that? One thing it means to me is that they are going to pick their targets and hit them. I don’t see a ton of deceptive serving, moving the ball off-line, taking risks, etc. I see them picking targets and hitting them with precision over and over again. Oregon’s 2-person serve receive was their system, so I don’t blame them for using that against Louisville, but that’s the wrong matchup for that system to be effective. Louisville is going to take risk; ripping serves crosscourt with extra velocity, serving off-line droppers, etc. It’s tough to handle that with a 2-person receive.

On the other hand, if I’m going up against Pitt, their serving control actually does make them a bit more predictable. I’d pinch the interior seams a bit more, counting on Pitt to not go too aggressively for the sideline. You’re going to see them pick a serving target in each rotation and hit that player pretty consistently. If I’m Louisville; I’m getting Scott to step into that zone a little more aggressively and might even have some times where I step into a 2-person receive as the server is starting their approach² in situations where I am very confident about where the server is going.

If they aren’t going to miss, we need to be aggressive about getting out of medium and getting in-system when we can.

In terms of our serving plan, I don’t think there’s any special insight here. Klilka is a very good passer. Don’t let her get the ball. Great. Hopefully that was already our plan. The scouting upgrade I would make is to be really intentional about serving Vasquez cross-court. Against teams that are low-error in serve receive, I’m normally a fan of saying, “we’re not going to crack their receive, so let’s just keep the ball in.”

However… I don’t think the Pitt reception is uncrackable, and specifically, I do see a specific vulnerability. Louisville played a great match to beat them at the end of the regular season; one of the few times where Pitt got out-aced by their opponents. Here’s Louisville’s aces, what do you notice?

With the exception of Scott’s one off-liner slicer against a 2-person reception adustment, they were all cross-court, and generally hit pretty hard. Clearly this is a tactic that Louisville is already on to, so I’m not revealing anything here. So in this case, I’d be full green light and willing to miss a few serves as long as we’re putting deep crosscourt service pressure on Pitt.