Public Triangles

How to run Triangle analysis without DV or VS

Okay this one is pretty technical, but might apply to some of you out there. Question from a reader:

First of all I wanted to say thanks for putting together your Smarter Volley content!  It's been a great resource for our staff.  I do have a question that I really wish I didn't have to ask.  We are a VM program and we can easily pull data for terminal serves but are struggling to break out first ball and transition data.  Under the stats tab we have FBSO and Trans H% and under the scoring tab we have the following…

As we build our spreadsheet to calculate the three components we just want to make sure we have the correct data.  Would you be willing to clarify what numbers we need to pull from VM to get accurate first ball and transition differentials?

Good question, and this is just a little tricky but not too bad. If you have somebody who can build DataVolley or Volleystation worksheets, this is easier. If not, you just need to do a little manual Excel entry, but it’s still not too bad.

The standard Volleymetrics stats reports has everything you need to at least get a very good ballpark of your Terminal Serving, First Ball, and Transition differentials.

I say ballpark, because (1) you’re pulling %s, not raw numbers, (2) Volleymetrics does not code 100% of rallies with an assigned point¹ and (3) things like “a team only served 24 times because they ended the game with a sideout” don’t come into full consideration because you’re just pulling %s.

That said, this method should get you really close, especially once you’re a few matches into the season. This is the best way I can figure to do it (actually slightly different than the way I was pulling it last year, but an improvement I believe), but if anybody comes up with a better way, let me know.