Siding Out

Videos and takeaways from two sideout offense sessions

Earlier this week I posted an article discussing Sideout %.

Sideout %: What Is It Good For?

The point of this article was to look at two different teams with the same point differential.

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.

We’ve built out Team Profiles before related to the Triangle. The idea of Offensive Strength or Defensive Strength is a sidechain idea of a Team Profile. This concept doesn’t fit cleanly into one of the three areas of the Triangle, but it’s simple and useful enough to make it an important part of your analysis framework.

Over the past couple years, I’ve hosted a bunch of Coaching Workshops, in-person or via Zoom. Since starting SmarterVolley in November, I’ve been slowly integrating some of those previous sessions as they’ve been relevant to discussion topics on the Substack. I wanted to share two sessions with all you subscribers that deal with Sideout Offense, since that fits the theme.

Tom Black and Ryan McGuyre are two coaches who don’t need much introduction. These guys are fantastic coaches and I’ve learned a ton from them. There’s some similarities in their approach to putting an offense together, as well as some differences.

Both of these sessions are basically rotation-by-rotation snapshots of their offenses from that year, with some discussion points on setter entries, hitter routes, and decision-making against different block-defense schemes. Really valuable stuff. Both the videos and a summary of my key takeaways are coming up below the paywall.

A takeaway for me whenever I’ve been in the gym with Tom is how methodical he is with setter tutoring. This is an image from his session where he breaks down some of his approach to tutoring a setter and building out the offense. Lots of good ideas here as we approach the summer training season.