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So far I’ve covered both of last year’s NCAA women’s semifinals using the Triangle framework as a starting point for analysis. Check them out if you haven’t yet.

Semifinals Analysis: Texas v Wisconsin

Semifinals Analysis: Kentucky v Washington

Today I’ll look at last year’s NCAA Championship match, which saw Kentucky capture its first-ever National Championship with a 4-set win. With the NCAA selection comittee getting ready to set the field for the upcoming NCAA Tournament, we can complete our look back at the 2020/2021 tournament for any clues about what teams will need to do to succeed this year.

Let’s dive in a little deeper:

The Basics

Kentucky won in 4 sets with set scores of: 20-25, 25-18, 25-23, 25-22.

Kentucky scored 95 total points and Texas scored 88. Let’s see which portions of the game made the biggest difference.

The Triangle Lens

Kentucky had an advantage in all 3 areas, but the edges in Terminal Serving and First Ball were slight, while the 4-point gap in Transition points seems to be the biggest edge.

I also like to look at the overall weight of each area. Was this a First Ball-heavy game, or was it more Transition-dominant? Was it a high-ace/high-error type of serving night, or were both teams playing keep-it-in?

183 Total Points

21 Terminal Serves (11% of points)

96 First Ball Points (52% of points)

66 Transition Points (36% of points)

Over half the game played in First Ball is fairly high for women’s NCAA volleyball. That’s not totally surprising, considering that it was the finals, and as the level of volleyball rises, generally more of it is played in First Ball. Terminal Serving wasn’t the major factor in the game, but let’s look at it first:

Terminal Serves

There were 21 total Terminal Serves in the match:

4 Kentucky Aces

6 Kentucky Serve Errors

4 Texas Aces

7 Texas Serve Errors

This means that Kentucky scored 11 of these Terminal Serves (4 Aces + 7 Texas Serve Errors) while Texas scored the other 10 (4 Aces + 6 Kentucky Serve Errors).

As we saw in the other two semifinals, serving is more than just forcing aces and Kentucky also forced 5 overpasses from Texas, including 3 in the tight 3rd set.

I particularly like the first serve of that clip. Lining up straight on to the likely serving target of a front-row Eggleston forces the libero to pinch over. And I really like a server not being afraid to beat the pinch and serve crosscourt into the open court. When you have a lot of space to hit crosscourt, there’s a lot of room for the ball to move into a tight spot.

First Ball

41 Kentucky First Ball Kills

8 Kentucky First Ball Stops

39 Texas First Ball Kills

8 Texas First Ball Stops

Both teams were terminal in First Ball, and both teams had trouble stopping each other. That’s not a huge surprise. We saw in the Texas - Wisconsin analysis that Texas’ middles were unstoppable in First Ball, but Kentucky did manage to slow them down; 5 kills and 2 blocks on 14 attempts for a 0.214 efficiency. Texas was really good on the pins, but slowing down the Texas middles helped Kentucky gain a small advantage here.

No surprise that Eggleston was great for Texas. She produced 12 kills on 21 swings with no errors in First Ball. I really like the hitting toolkit she showed in this match. We’ll dive more into that in a future article, but for now here’s some clips.

It’s tough to be dominant if you don’t have heat on the angle, and she does. But she boosts her efficiency with some of those nice off-speed shots. I especially like the jam down the line when the block gives it to her. You see a lot of men’s international players doing that, and I like to see women doing it more and more too.

Kentucky was really good on the left side as well. Their kill distribution in First Ball was:

26 Left Side Kills

3 Middle Kills

12 Right Side Kills

If you can score efficiently on the left side, you’re really tough to beat. Alli Stumler was the top producer for Kentucky this night:

A lot of range and a lot of hitting with vision high at the edges. Really nice stuff there.

Transition

Kentucky earned a 4-point edge in the Transition phase, and that turned out to be the biggest difference in the match.

23 Kentucky Transition Kills

12 Kentucky Transition Stops

19 Texas Transition Kills

12 Texas Transition Stops

(Note: these numbers look slightly different than my Anatomy of Winning and Losing slides because I’m also including some overpass kills and non-attacking errors, which I didn’t in that presentation. The overall effect is the same though.)

We saw that both teams generated more transition attempts than their opponents in their semifinal match. Would that make a difference here? Kentucky created 7 more transition attempts than Texas (73 to 66), which doesn’t make up the whole 4-point difference, but it gets you part of the way there.

A big factor I saw on film was how well Kentucky transitioned when their setter dug the ball, compared to Texas. Let’s look at some numbers:

21 dig chances by Lilley (UK)

18 transition creates

7 kills

12 dig chances by Gabriel (UT)

6 transition creates

1 kill

So overall, Kentucky had a 6-point edge on setter digs turning to kills. That’s more than their whole transition edge in the match! Something I’m constantly talking to coaches and players about is how much of the game is played without the setter setting the ball, particularly in transiton. Over 25% of Kentucky’s transition offense was played without the setter taking the second ball. Not only does it help to have a setter with 18 (!) digs in a National Championship, but you also have to be able to transition out of it.

That’s how you win a National Championship!

I’m looking forward to this NCAA tournament. Any predictions from the audience?