Scouting Pt2: Opponent Defense

Playoffs?? Playoffs??

The NCAA Women’s Volleyball playoffs are here. In conjuction with playoff previews and post-match analysis, I’m including a 3-part series on scouting and gameplanning. Last week, in Part 1, I discussed Scouting Serve and Pass.

In Part 2, we’ll look at Scouting Opponent Defense.

In last week’s post, I said this:

I also find Serving and Passing a bit underrated when it comes to scouting. Whenever people talk to me about scouting, what always comes up first is scouting opponent hitting. But the first thing I always scout is Serving and Passing. Since it’s underrated, it’s probably an area to gain an edge over what some people aren’t doing.

I’m deliberately saving Scouting Opponent Offense until the last part of this series because I think the other two areas of scouting, while not necessarily more important, sometimes get a short shift. So without further ado, let’s go:

Why Scout Opponent Defense?

We accept that Sideout is important. Talk to any coach about what they need to do better, and almost everybody says, if we sideout better, we’ll win more. And then, when you look at their scouting report, how much of it is dedicated to Sideout?

I think it’s totally fine to stick with a system and make your opponents adjust to you. If you have a an offensive (or defensive) system that you feel really good about and you think you can do well just running your defaults, that’s great. I just find something out-of-balance when teams have a ton of defensive-oriented scouting and nothing for how they are going to sideout better.

Some teams also keep their Opponent Defense scout more to a private conversation with their setter(s). There’s some logic to that. Maybe our outside hitters have enough on their plate and don’t need to be too concerned with whether or not their middles will front or follow or setter or stay neutral. I get that argument. However, I do think there’s something to making your offensive plans Common Knowledge. If everybody knows that their middle is going to take a step to her let when you run a tight quick and she’s going to be late to close on your outside hitter… I think that gets everybody a little fired up to make things work, and a lot more fired up when it works out.

I think it’s worth sharing at least a little bit of your offensive plans with everybody. You can dive deeper with your setters in a separate session if need be.

What To Scout

To me, the most important things to scout on Opponent Defense are:

1. How they block and defend high left side.

2. The capabilities of their individual blockers, especially the pin blockers.

3. How they will likely block against your different middle attacks.

4. The capabilities of their individual defenders.

5. What and how they are likely to adjust and if there’s anything situational that they do.

Let’s take these 1 by 1.

How they block and defend high left side.

For the most part, you can’t go wrong with swinging hard to daylight. If you have a big seam between the right side and middle blockers, just go crush the ball. But what about in high ball situations, where there’s not a clear opening and the set quality might be imperfect?

I like to provide hitters information on what out shots or secondary shots are most likely to be open against a specific team. To do so, I like to know what sort of look they are likely to give us when we set a high ball to our left side hitter.

The most common blocking alignment is going to be to take the line. But does this team leave line open? If so, I’d love to know that my left side hitter might have an easy out shot by tooling that line blocker. Some teams also mean to seal the line, but individual blockers might over-rotate and give up that line edge.

Does this team attempt to triple block on the left side? At a certain level of men’s volleyball, that’s going to be assumed. You’ll see it some in NCAA-level volleyball, but it’s certainly not common.

What’s their tip coverage system? Broadly speaking, do they rotate or do they read? We never tip line on a rotation defense! We only Pot Throw!

The capabilities of their individual blockers, especially the pin blockers.

The most important thing to know here is if they have a weak blocker. The next most important thing to know is if they have a particularly strong blocker. I want to know if they have a particularly weak blocker on the pin because (a) we can set our hitters against that blocker a lot and (b) we can go at her if we are in trouble. I want to know if they have a particularly strong blocker, either on the pin or in the middle, not so much because we have to avoid setting against her, but we want to know where she is in a high ball situation and not give her easy stuff blocks. If we have to take a tough swing, take it against the weaker blocker.

How they will likely block against your different middle attacks.

If we attack the gap to the middle’s left, like a tight quick, is she going to stay neutral or step toward the quick? Will their left-side blocker pinch in to help or kick out?

If we attack the gap to the middle’s right (push, 31, etc), is she going to stay neutral or step toward the quick? Will their right-side blocker pinch in to help or kick out?

How much will they stick with their base system and how much will they vary it? How much will they read and how much will they commit?

The capabilities of their individual defenders.

This is more important at the Juniors level, but it’s still relevant for high-level teams. At the Juniors level, this might be more about avoiding a particularly strong libero who digs in zone 5. If she’s playing zone 6, it’s kind of tough to avoid her too much, other than the fact that you don’t want to swing into zone 6 all that often anyway.

But if you’re a Juniors team and you’re playing against a libero who is set to start in the Big 10 next year, you might want to consciously swing a little more to the 1/6 seam than crosscourt when you take a high ball swing.

It’s also nice to know who the particularly weak defenders are. This is even the case at the higher levels. There’s some physical opposites who aren’t great defenders and we can tip on them. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get a kill, but if you’re in trouble, it’s nice to know who might mishandle a tip and keep them out-of-system in trans and who is going to scoop that tip into a perfect dig.

I always scout middles who serve. In my experience, about half the middles out there are capble defenders. About 1/4 are easy to tip on and we want to do so as much as possible. And the other 1/4 are so worried about not getting tipped on that anything deep will score.

What and how they are likely to adjust and if there’s anything situational that they do.

Have you played this team before? Look at how they defended your hitters and what adjustments they made to any of your offense that worked particularly well.

Look at when they gave up kills down the line. Do they overcorrect and really seal the line (potentially opening up the seam) on the next ball?

Look at when they let a tip score. Do they adjust quickly, or will they let another tip go down before they adjust?

Look at how and when any setter dumps scored on them. Are there patterns to exploit there?

Try this in your next scout meeting. Let me know what the biggest takeaways were in the comments.