Points Of The Triangle: First Ball
When we looked at The Triangle method of analyzing our team, we put a different aspect of the game at each point of the triangle. Last week, we looked at Terminal Serving. In this section, we’ll look at First Ball Points.
What Are First Ball Points?
First Ball Points break down into four categories
1. Our First Ball Kills.
2. Opponent First Ball Kills.
3. Our First Ball Stops.
4. Opponent First Ball Stops.
First Ball Kills
A First Ball Kill is when we kill the ball in our first opportunity out of serve receive. Opponent serves the ball in the court. We pass it. We set it. We kill it for a point. A kill on the second ball (for example: a setter dump for a point) is also a First Ball Kill.
An opponent First Ball Kill is when we serve the ball and our opponent passes and scores in their first opportunity out of serve receive.
If a team attacks out of serve receive, the opponent gets a block touch, the ball is covered, and that team scores, it is not a First Ball Kill. That’s a Transition Point. We’ll talk more about that later.
First Ball Stops
A First Ball Stop is when we stop the opponent in their first opportunity out of serve receive. This can happen because they made an unforced error, or because we stuff block them. Likewise, if we make an error on our first ball attack, or the opponent blocks us, that is an opponent First Ball Stop.
What Are Not First Ball Points?
An ace is not a First Ball Stop. It’s a Terminal Serve. A service error is not a First Ball Kill, it’s also a Terminal Serve. Any block touch that is covered (by either team) results in a Transition Point. Any dig that leads to a point is also not a First Ball Point, it’s a Transition Point.
How Common Are First Ball Points?
At the high school level1, you see matches where each phase of the game is about 1/3 of the total points. This applies to some juniors club levels as well, particularly around 14s or 15s. Higher levels see fewer Terminal Serves. Higher levels also see more First Ball points, relative to Transition points.
Stronger high school teams, or strong juniors teams at the 17s or 18s levels might see First Ball points creep above 40% of the total points, equal or above the amount of Transition points, but the majority of high school teams are playing at a level where First Ball is between 30-40% of the game and is a bit less than the Transition game.
NCAA teams typically have more first ball points than Transition points. At this level, there are also fewer Terminal Serves (NCAA teams miss fewer serves and get aced less than high school teams), so first ball points are a higher share. In the 2020 NCAA Women’s Championship match between Kentucky and Texas there were 96 First Ball Points out of 183 total. 52% of the game being played in First Ball indicates a pretty high level of play!
Why Do First Ball Points Matter?
First Ball points matter because they translate to winning. (Come on, hypothetical question asker, they are like 1 out of every 3 points, of course they matter!)
Winning the First Ball battle2 correlated really well to winning in the Big 10 this year:
How Do First Ball Points Relate To Serve-Pass?
Good volleyball teams are good at lots of things.
In the 2021 Big 10 season, there was a 0.63 correlation between Good Pass % and winning the First Ball battle. Interestingly enough, there was a 0.82 correlation between not getting aced and winning the First Ball battle. Passing accurately is important, but it might be more important to just play Aceball.
If I am in-system more than my opponent, it’s easier to kill the ball. If I serve them out-of-system, it’s easier to stop them. But serving strategies differ. Some teams favor a higher risk-reward ratio. More aggressive serving could lose us Terminal Serves if we miss too many, but set us up to win First Ball if the other team struggles to pass. On the flip side, teams that miss fewer serves are more likely to win Terminal Serves, but if they serve too easy, they put pressure on their block to stop the opponent in First Ball.
You see that last point illustrated in the Big 10 chart above. Purdue, Minnesota, and Maryland were the 3 lowest-error serving teams in the Big 10. All 3 of them had a proportionally higher Win % in Terminal Serves than First Ball.
It’s more interesting to look at what happens when we lose Terminal Serves but win First Ball. In the Big 10 this year, you still won about 60% of the time.3
How Do First Ball Points Relate To Transition?
Go to the above graph and see that there’s a pretty good correlation between winning the First Ball battle and winning the Transition battle. In the Big 10 this year it was 0.82. The biggest outliers were Ohio State/Minnesota (quite a bit better in Transition than First Ball) and Rutgers (much better in First Ball than Transition).
As I said, good volleyball teams are good at lots of things.
If my setter is good at setting the ball out of serve receive, she’s also probably pretty good at setting the ball in transition. If I have hitters than can score out of serve receive, they can probably kill the ball in transition, and vice versa. But the overlap isn’t 100%.
First Ball situations tend to be a bit more controlled. Middle attackers get a higher % of First Ball attacks. Transition balls tend to get set higher and tend to be attacked against a better-formed block. A much higher % of transition attacks are set by non-setters.4
So what happens when we win First Ball but lose Transition? In that case, our winning % is only about 40%. 5
With the NCAA Championship coming up, I’m looking with particular interest at how these teams execute in First Ball. All 4 teams were really good in that area in the regular season. Remember, it’s not just the ability to kill the ball, but also to pick up stops.
In general, when I say, “high school level,” I tend to mean, “high school varsity.” But even that is about a broad a concept as saying “college volleyball,” which lumps in the top of D1 with the bottom of D3. So there’s a wide range in level of “high school” volleyball.
This isn’t a graph of First Ball Kill %. This is “out of all the points that were killed or stopped in first ball, what % did this team win?” If I have 5 FBKs and 2 FBEs and you have 3 FBKs and 0 FBEs, we have each won 5 of 10 total First Ball points, for a 50% First Ball Win %.
This only happened 71 times, so a bit of a small sample size warning there.
Generally under 10% of First Ball attacks are set by a non-setter, whereas about 25% of Transition balls are set by a non-setter.
Again, drawing data from one Big 10 season, so there’s some small sample size effects here, but I think most leagues are going to be similar.