Offensive Profiles: Out-of-System Weakness

The last one

Intro

In previous years, I’ve outlined 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 built Team Profiles. These are diagnostic tools. Tell me my weak points, so I can work on them. They are also 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

This summer we’re taking another deep dive into the numbers as I share another layer of Team Profiles: Offensive Profiles. I’ll add the links here as I roll out this series:

Passing Strength
Passing Weakness
In-System Attacking Strength
In-System Attacking Weakness
Out-of-System Attacking Strength
Out-of-System Attacking Weakness

What Is An Offensive Profile?

I categorize 3 main components of Sideout Offense:

1. The ability to pass the ball In-System.

2. The ability to score when you do pass the ball In-System.

3. The ability to score when you don’t pass the ball In-System.

Do you pass well (or poorly)? Do you attack well (or poorly) when you’re running offense? Do you attack well (or poorly) when you’re out-of-system? Or are you about equally good (or bad) in all 3 areas?

A team can have a relative strength in one of these areas, a relative weakness in one of these areas, or be about equally proficient in all of these areas. The key here is the word relative. The team that’s 18-2 is probably better in all 3 of these areas than the team that goes 8-12. But the point of a profile is to compare the aspects of a team not to other teams, but to the other aspects within the same team.

What Do You Mean By Out-of-System Weakness?

A team with an Out-of-System Weakness profile is a team whose Out-of-System Attack proficiency is relatively weaker than the other two Offensive Factors: Passing and In-System Attacking.

I define a weakness as an aspect that is at least 1 standard-deviation below the other two aspects. For example, a team that’s a bit below-average in OoS Attack has an OoS Weakness if they are a bit above-average in Passing and InSys Attacking. But a team that’s strong (say 1 standard deviation above) in both Passing and InSys attacking could be merely average in OoS Attacking and still classify as an Out-of-System Weakness profile. The point is that it’s relative to the other aspects within that team.

Why 1 standard deviation? I don’t know, it seems about right to me.

But more importantly, it’s not even about the specific statistical quantification. If you’re a high school coach, you don’t know what the standard deviation is for all of these aspects- although I will share some data as we go. But most coaches have a sense for the strengths and weaknesses of their teams. Where do you seem to gain an advantage? Where you do seem to have a disadvantage?

Some teams are balanced. That’s informative as well. Don’t assume you team is clearly skewed in one direction without taking some time to think about it.

Also, don’t assume your team has a strength in an area of the game, just because you WANT them to have a strength in that area of the game. You may value scrappy defense and smart transition play, but it may not have translated into results on the court. Yet.

How Common Are Teams With An Out-of-System Weakness Profile?

In the 2023 NCAA Women’s season, 7 of the top-100 teams profiled with a Passing Weakness. So this was not a common profile.

11 Teams - Passing Strength
6 Teams - Passing Weakness
12 Teams - In-System Strength
6 Teams - In-System Weakness
11 Teams - Out-of-System Strength
7 Teams - Out-of-System Weakness
51 Teams - Balanced (no extreme strength or weakness)¹

Here were the teams with an Out-of-System Weakness profile.

It’s important to note that these are not necessarily the worst out-of-system teams in the country; they are the teams least reliant on their OoS attacking to produce sideout offense. Wyoming and Marquette were only a bit below-average in OoS attack,but their other numbers were good enough that they still qualified as an OoS Weakness.

How Successful Were Teams With An Out-of-System Weakess Profile?

Clearly there’s some successful teams here, including Stephen F Austin, who were undefeated in-conference. Like we’ve seen with every profile, there’s ways to be successful with different strengths and weakneses.

If you just correlate conference Win% to OoS Index², there’s very little correlation, but it’s actually slightly negative, at -0.15. In a sample of only 100 teams though, I would want to see a much higher (or more negative) correlation before I did anything with that information. Look at the chart of Win% and OoS Index:

You do see that slight negative trendline, but you also see a lot of teams well above and well below the trend.

A final way to look at success is to look at the profiles of the most successful teams in the country. And here is an interesting case study, because none of the teams that made the Sweet 16 this year had an OoS Weakness. Of course, small sample size warnings and all that, but it is interesting that, in general, there was even a slight negative correlation with OoS Index and Win%, but none of the very best teams in the country were weak in this area. Something to think about.

So What Are The Takeaways?

My 3 takeaways from looking at this analysis…

1. I never like to have a weakness out-of-system. Even though InSys Index had a higher correlation to Win% than OoS Index, I think that (a) those correlations are both so low that I wouldn’t read too much into them, and (b) just philosophically I never feel comfortable with a team that can’t score out-of-system.

2. I think it’s probably easier to scheme with some tactics to find ways to squeeze a little more in-system quality out of your offense than it is to find more ways to score out-of-system. Physicality is also a big deal out-of-system. You have to have some hitters with enough velocity to score.

3. If I’m going to be weaker OoS, my ability to score in Transition becomes really important. Next month when we shift over to Defensive Profiles, I’m curious to see how that looks for some of these teams.

Okay, that’s the 6 main profiles. Over the next couple weeks, I’ll wrap up the Offensive Profiles series and then in August we’ll transition to start looking at the other side of the ball with some Defensive Profiles.

1. These numbers add up to more than 100 because some teams classified in more than 1 profile.

2. Which is kind of a made-up state that just compares the Out-of-System Standard Deviation to the other 2 categories. In theory, a higher Out-of-System Index means a team is relatively more reliant on out-of-system attacking to score.