Serving and Game Theory

Plus I rehash some decisions from 2014

I like numbers. Not everybody does. If you don’t like numbers, this might not be the post for you.¹ But don’t worry, I also included some pictures! Most NCAA numbers are courtesy of Volleymetrics, but some are from my own research. Also, shout out to my guy Peter Wong for helping me put some of this together. Also, if you want to learn how to dive deeper into the numbers, check out the DV4 Manual that Jeff Liu and I put together.

Some selected stats from Power 5² conference leaders.

Ace %

Texas! A big part of that is Parra doing her best Sam Bricio impersonation. 16% ace is a lot. But every Texas server was at least 6.9% ace. Jeez!

Error %

Texas again! And to repeat myself: a big part of that is Parra doing her best Sam Bricio impersonation. 22% error is a lot. But 4 of 6 Texas servers were at least 12.6% error. They were going for it!

Going For It

Okay so let’s put the two together, who played the least “volleyball”?

Texas cranked that Jamie Morrison serving volume up to 11 this year. A couple other Sweet 16 teams in there as well. I’m always curious which is the result of individual player strengths and which is the result of a system-wide preference for aggressive serving. A few of these teams I know to have a historic preference for aggressive serving. A few I know less about.

It’s also rare that you can show a top-10 statistic that includes both a team that won every conference match and a team that lost every conference match.

What does that tell me? This stat probably isn’t very meaningful as a predictor of success. The correlation between (Aces + Errors) and Win % was -0.13. So slightly negative, but that might as well be 0.

Let’s see the flip side

“Keep It In”

I included 13 teams instead of 10, because that captures 3 additional very successful teams, including National Champion Wisconsin. Again, you’re running the gamut here of teams in terms of Win %. No surprise to see Minnesota, which is almost always among the lowest-error (serving and hitting) teams in the country on this list.

I also think it’s a worthwhile comparison between Wisconsin and Texas, arguably the two most physical teams at the net in this year’s NCAA. I noted previously how Wisconsin played a less-aggressive serving strategy. I think that’s a good one when you were as dominant as they were in First Ball and Transition.³ If you’re capable of blocking 24 (24!!!) balls in a National Championship, why miss a serve and let the other team off the hook?

Was the Texas aggressiveness a mistake? I think a flat game theory approach would say probably.

This picture contributes no volleyball information, I just really like The Roots.

High-aggression is probably an underdog strategy, although maybe not. At the end of the day, players aren’t robots. They have strengths and weaknesses. Are you going to tell this server to tone it down?

On the other hand, that’s exactly what we did at USA in 2014. This:

Became this:

That was, to say the least, a controversial decision.⁴

In the end, it worked out for us. We went from 10th in serving in the 2014 Grand Prix to 1st in serving and a gold medal in the 2014 World Championship.

Lower is better.

So, that was cool. But it won’t always work out like that. You make the best decisions you can based off objective analysis and subjective evaluation of the capabilities of your players.

What do you think?

1. I mean, if you really don’t like stats at all, you probably think this whole blog sucks and I’m very confused as to how you got here.

2. Sorry BYU!!

3. Also worth noting that in their Big-10 opener loss to Maryland, they missed 17 serves. I have to wonder if that influenced how the rest of the season played out.

4. At least among the posters on Volleytalk. Let’s face it, that’s all that really matters.