The March $7 Study

This one might help you get blocked a little less.

The theme of this spring for SmarterVolley is Teaching. I’m stepping back from the heavy statistical emphasis of the past several months and highlighting ideas that are more teaching-orienting, training-orienting, etc. The How more than the What.

But… let’s not get too far out of our lanes, eh? So, I’m starting a new feature here on SmarterVolley. Let’s call it The $7 Study. The idea here is that I’ll come out with one clean study each month. I’ll aim to answer some specific, small-but-useful questions and package it into a short, easily-digestible study. I’d argue that, if you’re serious about coaching, spending 10 minutes to unlock 1 small upgrade for your team is worth $7 by itself.

That’s my value proposition for either (1) existing subscribers who care more about the statistical stuff than the learning/teaching stuff or (2) people thinking about going from free to Premium. Each month I’ll offer one (or more) evidence-based potential upgrades for your team, for the price of $7.

February: Modified Efficiency

This Month: Blocking Effectiveness By Position

I’ve written previously:

Some of the challenges that make it difficult to stat blocking are the same that make it difficult to coach blocking:

(1) The blocker doesn’t have full control. On most sets, the hitter can beat the blocker with the right shot. It’s possible to make a good block and still have the hitter kill the ball.

(2) Many attacks never touch the block. At some levels, over half of attacks will touch the block, but at lower levels (such as high school), more than 3/4 of the attacks will go clean past the block. It’s difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of a block when the blocker doesn’t touch the ball.

(3) There are lots of non-terminal blocks. At the NCAA women’s collegiate level, only about half of block touches are stuffs or tools/errors. It’s not always clear whether a “block touch” (that doesn’t result in a point for one team or the other) is a positive or negative play.

(4) It can be difficult to separate the performance of the player from the system they play in.

(5) The standard box score in the USA, the NCAA box score, is mediocre at best at giving you blocking information.

So evaluating blocking is hard. For those of you that have Volleymetrics, they have some extra data that I think is valuable. I include this on my GMS Stats app as well in the form of Stuff:Tool Ratio.

What Is Stuff:Tool Ratio?