Sideout Profile: Defensive Strength

If we can't sideout, we might as well stop them from doing it.

Last week I started branching out from the first part of the Triangle analytics framework I have been laying out in this newsletter.

Sideout %: What Is It Good For?

Each of the points of the triangle have supporting pieces to them. I’ll eventually call these Key Factors. But the in-between layer there is this idea of Offensive Strength or Defensive Strength. In the hierarchy, this idea isn’t really above or below the Triangle, it’s more to the side. You still have your Triangle Profile, but you also have an Offensive or Defensive Strength (or balance) in addition to that.

A Reminder About Sideout Comparisons

If you know your Sideout, and you know your Opponent’s Sideout, you know your point differential, which means that you also know a pretty good approximation of your win-loss record.

Sideout - Opponent Sideout = Sideout Differential = Point Differential = Wins and Losses

So now we have a two-factor equation. And this is a reason that experienced coaches can simply use Sideout as a one-stat-to-rule-them-all. Because (I hope) you know your win-loss record, if you also know Sideout, then you have a pretty good idea what your Opponent Sideout might be - lower if you’re winning and higher if you’re losing.

Our example from last week:

For example, take two teams in different leagues that both have a +4% Point Differential, which also means that they have a +4% Sideout Differential. Now imagine that these differentials are accomplished in two different ways:

Team A: 58.7% Sideout, 56% Opponent Sideout

Team B: 61% Sideout, 58.7% Opponent Sideout

These are two pretty different teams. Team A is almost exactly average in Sideout and above-average in Opponent Sideout. Team B is almost exactly average in Opponent Sideout, and above-average in Sideout.

Last week, we looked at the teams that had an Offensive Strength profile. That is, they relied relatively more on their sideout game to win than they did on their ability to prevent their opponents from siding out.

Defensive Strength Profile

Now let’s take a look at the teams with a Defensive Strength profile.

A few details here:

SO and oSO are Sideout and Opponent Sideout respectively.

SO Index and oSO Index are how many standard deviations from the mean that the team was. So Purdue’s Sideout was about a half-sd above average, but their ability to stop their opponent was more than a full sd above average, so they classify as a strong Defensive Strength.

And SO Ratio, as you might be able to tell, is simply the difference between the SO and oSO indices.

This is a list of the bottom-10 teams in SO Index, which, to be clear, is not the bottom-10 sideout teams. It is the teams who were least reliant on their own sideout to win matches, or, said another way, the teams who were most reliant on their ability to stop their opponents from siding out aka their defense.

As has been the case with many of these Team Profile exercises, there is a wide range of team success. You have 1-loss Kentucky and 0-win Rutgers in the same image. And indeed, the correlation between SO Index and Win % is essentially 0.¹

So what’s the point of this measure? To understand your team better. The choice to fix your weaknesses or enhance your strengths is a more difficult decision. I’ve touched on that in some previous posts. But in order to make that decision, it would be good to know what your strengths and weaknesses actually are.

Training

There’s some pretty simple takeaways for training when you diagnose an Offensive Strength or Defensive Strength profiles. If you have a weakness in one area, you might want to spend additional training time to bring up that area. My bias (and I think this is the more common bias) is to default to sideout-based activities. So if I need to bring up the defensive side of the ball, I often consciously need to shift the focus of practice to give us extra reps there. Additionally, there’s some positional factors:

Libero - Most liberos tend to spend warmup time working on serve receive. Can you make some defensive upgrades in tutoring or small-group activities? For example: overhand digging, sprawl work, non-setter setting, etc.

Middle Blockers - Do they spend more time attacking or blocking at practice? If they’ve been spending more time focusing on attacking, can you find some practice time for additional blocking work?

Setters - Siding out is obviously the top priority for setters, but sometimes this can cause deficiencies for setters in serving, digging, or blocking. Don’t neglect your sideout, but if you have a defensive weakness, make sure they are getting some training in these skills.

Outside Hitters - The most common defensive area that outside attackers get shortchanged on is serving. Most serve/pass drills put your primary receivers in reception, obviously. So this can be that outside hitters can get significantly fewer serving reps than middles, setters, and opposites. Make sure they get enough serving reps to be productive servers.

We’ll dive more into these topics as we start to explore the sub-categories that produce advantages or disadvantages in different parts of the offensive or defensive sides of the ball. Stay tuned.

1. Which, to remind, doesn’t mean that it’s bad to have a high (or low) SO Index. It just means that you could be successful (or unsuccessful) with a high SO Index, low SO Index, or anywhere in between.