May $7 Study

Conclusion: Errors are bad

This spring I took a detour from my usual analytic-heavy content on SmarterVolley to focus on more qualitative aspects of coaching. To make sure I still got you all your fix of stats I launched the $7 Study feature where once a month I include some statistical research I’ve done. The goal is to give you a concise summary with a couple clear takeaways that you can digest in 10 minutes or less.

It’s also my pitch to you free subscribers! Hey, I put out a lot of content, and a lot of it is for free. If you’re a free subscriber and you read everything I put out and listen to all my podcast appearances, etc, you’ll pretty much get a feel for my way of approaching the game. But, if you’re busy and want to get right to some core takeaways, you’ll like these $7 Studies. In 10 minutes or less you’ll get at least one clear takeaway for your team, supported by evidence.

Previous $7 Studies include:

February: What attack patterns are most effective?
March: How effective are the blockers at each position?
April: How do setting choices affect opponent transition efficiency?

I’ve gotten good feedback from you all on these, so I’ll continue them for the foreseeable future. As usual, the introduction to this study is open to everyone, but the data and conclusions are behind the paywall.

Make Them Play

I wrote about Make Them Play in one of the first SmarterVolley articles ever.

Some teams have enjoyed game variations based on this concept, such as Make Them Play Queens. Other coaches have found the simple act of tracking this concept to be valuable. Many juniors coaches are shocked to find out that their team fails to return the ball as much as half the time they get served the ball. When they are on receive, they would struggle to win 6 v 1!

So we have a feeling that this is an important concept. And in particular, I want to refine the idea of Make Them Play to exclude giving the other team freeballs. So now instead of just tracking Times Aced and Unforced Errors, we’re going to sharpen things up:

(First Ball Attack Attempts - First Ball Errors) / (Total Receptions)

How you define “Attempt” is up to you. For me, a downball is no good. There has to be something that looks like jumping and attacking or else a deliberate setter dump from the ground. So call it Make Them Really Play maybe.

MTP In The NCAA