Live Rallies

A Triangle Sidebar

For the past several months, I’ve been fleshing out the analytics framework I call the Triangle. If you need to get caught up, here’s the 4 main articles that outline the concept of the Triangle, as well as the 3 points of the Triangle.

• The Triangle

• Terminal Serving

• First Ball

• Transition

From this framework, I also build out several Team Profiles. These can be thought of as diagnostic tools. Tell me my weak points, so I can work on them. They are also meant to be profiles of the different ways that teams can be successful. Tell me my strengths, so I can highlight them.

• Terminal Serving Strength

• Terminal Serving Weakness

• First Ball Strength

• First Ball Weakness

• Transition Strength

• Transition Weakness

Above all, the point of these tools are to improve your play on the court. Just running the numbers isn’t enough. How is that going to change how you’re going to train? How will it change the strategies you teach your players? Etc

Live Rallies: Not Quite A Point In The Triangle

Before I fully-developed the Triangle framework, I used to use a simpler distinction: “Terminal Serves vs Live Rallies.” If you’ve been reading this newsletter at all, you’re familiar with Terminal Serving. Live Rallies is a term that combines both First Ball and Transition. You could think of it as (1 - Terminal Serves), but only if you’re really a freaking nerd.

For me, the most vivid example of this concept will always be the 2016 Olympic semifnals. USA v Serbia. We lost 25 - 20, 17 - 25, 21 - 25, 25 - 16, 13 - 15. If you’re counting, you notice that both teams scored exactly 101 points in that match. That was by far our worst serving match of the tournament. We served 2 aces while missing 18 serves. Serbia put up 8 aces while missing 14 serves.

Just using the Terminal Serves vs Live Rallies deliniation, it breaks down like:

16 USA Terminal Serving Points (2 aces + 14 Serbia errors)
85 USA Live Rally Points (101 - 16)
26 Serbia Terminal Serving Points (8 aces + 18 USA errors)
75 Serbia Live Rally Points (101 - 26)

So we had a 10-point edge, “when volleyball happened,” but Serbia made up for it with a 10-point edge in Terminal Serving.

And if you want even more illustration of this concept, how about the gold medal match just a couple days later?

China won: 19 - 25, 25 - 17, 25 - 22, 25 - 23.
94 total points for China, 87 for Serbia.

18 China Terminal Serving Points (6 aces + 12 Serbia errors)
76 China Live Rally Points (94 - 18)
10 Serbia Terminal Serving Points (6 aces + 4 China errors)
77 Serbia Live Rally Points (87 - 10)

So we get TS’d by Serbia, and then they turn around and get TS’d by China.

Application

I obviously like the Triangle framework. I’m writing a whole newsletter wrapped around those concepts. But the “Live Rallies” idea is pretty simple. If you’re in the club or high school world, it might be easier to introduce this simple binary to kids who are largely unfamiliar with volleyball statistics.

For example, I worked with a 15s club team and showed them this info after a tournament.

For us as coaches, this is relatively simple to parse out. But the first time I explained this to the kids, I had to take some time to explain it. Even subsequent times require you to remind the players what this means. But after a few tournaments seeing this info, most kids will catch on.

This simple also allowed us some actionable info going into future practices. For example, our main takeaways were:

1. We were serving tough, but missing a lot. I also tracked errors in the net vs errors long. Most of our errors were long, which meant that we were hitting serves hard, but maybe over-serving. That gave us something to work on in the next practice block.

2. Likewise, we were killing the ball a lot more. Both teams were very high-error¹ but we were a lot higher kill.

So both of these takeaways were fairly positive, especially considering this was an early-season tournament. We were hitting tough serves and killing the ball, but we were just too high-error. If this had been a late-season tournament, I would have looked to make more tactical changes. What situations do we need to stay aggressive and what situations do we just need to keep the ball in? Or maybe I would have talked to certain serves about dialing it down.

Early in the season, I look to make technical changes, especially with younger players. Refine the serving technique, work on approaches to improve hitter toolkit, get the setters more tutoring work so they are more accurate.

Win Both Games

Another good takeaway for players is to “win both games.” Both, in this sense, being the Terminal Serving game and the Live Rally game. If you win both, you can’t be outscored! In this sense, it’s similar to Spotlight:

Spotlight

And in fact, Spotlighting Terminal Serving is the first and simplest way to play Spotlight. Which is basically what Aceball is.

This is also a good deliniation for certain players, especially liberos. Hey, libero, how are you helping us win the Terminal Serving game? And how are you helping us win the Live Rally game?

Think about this concept and see if you’re finding it helpful. Have you coached any teams where just using Terminal Serving and Live Rallies would be easier than the full Triangle?

1. And at U-15, remember that a bunch of these errors aren’t traditional hitting errors. I file them under general/ballhandling errors. They might be a straight-up double-contact called by the ref, but often they are a “bad-but-not-outright-shank” dig that the setter pursues but can’t bring back. Or brings back but they can’t get the third ball over the net. Or miscommunication on a dig leading to a ball dropping. Etc.