Men's World Champs Triangles Pt3

Transition

January is all about major-competition analysis! I’m applying the Triangle analysis to three recent major competitions in indoor volleyball: the NCAA Women’s National Championshp, the FIVB Women’s World Championship, and the FIVB Men’s World Championship. This week we’re focusing on Transition and how that was applied in each tournament.

Today we’re looking at the 2022 FIVB Men’s World Championship. In Week 1, we looked at the Terminal Serving aspect. Then, we shifted our focus to First Ball. Now, we round out the series with a look at Transition. Here’s the complete series:

NCAA Women: Terminal Serving
NCAA Women: First Ball
NCAA Women: Transition
FIVB Women: Terminal Serving
FIVB Women: First Ball
FIVB Women: Transition
FIVB Men: Terminal Serving
FIVB Men: First Ball

How Common Were Transition Points?

Transition Points were about 1/4th of points scored in the World Championship. This year’s Worlds showed a neatly symmetrical pattern of play:

Distribution Of Points
25% Terminal Serves
49% First Ball
26% Transition

We see a bit smaller proportion of the men’s game played in Transition. The First Ball Kill numbers are a bit higher, but also, the Terminal Serving number is higher, because the men miss almost twice as many serves as the women. With all the missed serves, and a bit higher FBK rate, there are fewer rallies that make it to the Transition game.

Let’s display the proportions for each level of play.

About what you would expect. A steady decline in total number of Transition and an increase in Terminal Serving and First Ball points.

How Did Transition Effect Winning And Losing?

The average edge of a winning team in Transition was +5.7 and the standard deviation was 6.1 Both of these effects were bigger than Terminal Serving. The average Transition differential was even higher than the First Ball differential, although the standard deviation was a bit lower. Those two things put together mean that the winning team won the Transition game (or: if you won the Transition game, you won the match) at the highest rate of any aspect of the Triangle. At the 2022 FIVB Men’s World Championship, the winning team won the Transition battle 80% of the time.

Now let’s compare Transition to the other two aspects in a different way.

If you lost Terminal Serving, but won Transition, you still won the match 68% of the time. We also saw last week that if you lost First Ball, but won Transition, you still won the match 60% of the time. These two comparisons suggest that Transition was actually the most influential factor to winning in the 2022 FIVB Men’s World Championship.

If you won Terminal Serving and First Ball, and lost Transition, you won the match 71% of the time.

If you won Terminal Serving and Transition, and lost First Ball, you won the match 77% of the time.

If you won First Ball and Transition, and lost Terminal Serving, you won the match 92% of the time.

These numbers again suggest that, at least in this tournament, Transition was the biggest determinant in winning the match. And the usual caveats apply: you can’t get to Transition if you serve cupcakes, miss too many serves, or get aced off the court. You can’t get to Transition if you let the other team kill every First Ball opportunity. All 3 factors interact with each other.

How Did Transition Impact The Top Teams?