Women's World Champs Triangle Pt2
First Ball
January is all about major-competition analysis! I’m applying the Triangle analysis to three recent major competitions in indoor volleyball: the NCAA Women’s National Championshp, the FIVB Women’s World Championship, and the FIVB Men’s World Championship. This week we’re focusing on First Ball and how that was applied in each tournament.
Today we’re looking at the 2022 FIVB Women’s World Championship. Specifically, we’re looking at First Ball in that competition. I’ll add links to each piece of this series as I release them:
NCAA Women: Terminal Serving
NCAA Women: First Ball
NCAA Women: Transition
FIVB Women: Terminal Serving
FIVB Women: Transition
FIVB Men: Terminal Serving
FIVB Men: First Ball
FIVB Men: Transition
How Common Were First Ball Points?
First Ball points were about 47% of points scored in the Women’s World Championship. If we break it down by Triangle phase:
16% Terminal Serves
47% First Ball Points
37% Transition Points
Very similar to the NCAA. A touch more First Ball, a touch more Terminal Serving, a touch less Transition. In most FIVB World Championship matches, there were more points scored in Transition than First Ball in 9 out of 100 matches. In the NCAA, this figure was 13 out of 63. At both levels, First Ball is a bigger chunk of the game, but the FIVB level sees a bigger disparity.
What does this mean for training? It suggests that FIVB teams need to spend significantly more time attacking out of serve receive than attacking out of transition. I don’t think there’s a mathematical formula that you can apply to these things (and, as we’ll see, success in Transition can sometimes be more influential on the outcome than success in First Ball), but it’s just worth knowing the share of time you spend in each side of the Triangle.
In the NCAA, the 35% of live receptions (non-aces) led to a kill. At the Women’s World Champs, this number was 40%.1
In the NCAA, 17% of live receptions (non-aces) led to a stop by the serving team. At the Women’s World Champs, this number was 15%.
92% of receptions in the NCAA tournament led to an attacking attempt. The number was the same for Women’s World Championships.
This is where the trend line is different from the progression we’ve seen from the juniors levels. At the younger ages, FB Kill is not the defining feature. It’s getting FB Stops, or probably more accurately: Making Them Play in First Ball so you don’t give your opponents easy FB Stops.
Most juniors teams also don’t come close to turning 92% of live receptions into attacks. Younger teams lose swings all the team due to poor setting or lack of effective communication out-of-system. But the difference between the NCAA and FIVB level is mostly about terminating the swings you’re already getting. Not surprising, but good to know.
How Did First Ball Effect Winning And Losing?
The average edge of a winning team in First Ball was +6.8 and the standard deviation was 7.8. Both of these effects were bigger than Terminal Serving. The average First Ball differential was a bit smaller than the average Transition differential. It’s surprising to me that the differential is smaller, despite there being more First Ball play overall. To me, this indicates the relative importance of Transition: there’s less of it, but it’s the critical separation between winning and losing teams… or at least it was in this year’s Women’s World Championship.
The team that won First Ball won the match 83% of the time. This is a lot and almost the exact same number as in the NCAA. It’s also significantly bigger than the Terminal Serving number, which, at 55%, wasn’t much more predictive than a coin flip. Next week, we’ll compare to Transition.
But let’s break this down a bit more. 36 of the 100 matches were Dominant, meaning the winning team won all 3 sides of the Triangle.2 This was less than in the NCAA; there were fewer lopsided matches in the World Championships than in the NCAA tournament.
Okay great, let’s get some more info about First Ball. There were 14 matches where a team won only 1 side of the Triangle and still won the match.
Number of One Side Of The Triangle Wins:
1 Terminal Serving Only
5 First Ball Only
8 Transition Only
Number of Two Sides Of The Triangle Wins:
10 Terminal Serving + First Ball
8 Terminal Serving + Transition
32 First Ball + Transition
It’s clear from these numbers that First Ball and Transition are more important than Terminal Serving, but it’s not necessarily clear whether First Ball or Transition are more important than the other. Ignore either aspect at your own peril.
As in the NCAA were 5 matches won only the First Ball side of the Triangle and still won the match:
Germany > Bulgaria
Turkey > Dominican
Turkey > Poland
USA > Thailand
Brazil > Japan
We’ve talked before about Team Profiles before, so these matches are good ones to study if you are a team with a First Ball Strength.
How Did First Ball Impact The Top Teams?
Let’s take a look at First Ball by the 4 semifinalists: Serbia, Brazil, Italy, USA.
Pretty similar actually in terms of overall edge. All 4 top teams won either 54% or 55% of First Ball points. In terms of points per set, all 4 teams had between a 1.7 and 2.0 point edge. It’s also another reminder of how thin the margins are that the margin is only between 1.7 and 2.0 points. These are the 4 best teams in the world, but they are only getting a 2-point edge per set in this area. There are no little things.
I’m not sure it means anything that there was a big disparity between the top First Ball team in the NCAA Final 4 (Texas, +2.3) and the 4th (Pitt, -0.8) but almost no disparity between the top and 4th First Ball teams in the Women’s WC. Probably just random, but it’s noticeable, at least.
Let’s look at First Ball Efficiency:
No slouches here. We see Serbia and Brazil at the tops for offensive efficiency and Italy the best on opponent efficiency. Let’s compare to the average World Champ efficiency of 0.303:
Very similar differentials for Serbia (+15%), Brazil (+14%), Italy (+14%), with USA (+10%) just a bit behind them. Serbia, Brazil, USA had more of a balanced approach- about equally good offensively and defensively, whereas Italy combined an above-average offense with a dominant defense to get the job done.
First Ball In The Final Four
Let’s look at the 4 medal-round matchups: the semi-finals of Serbia - USA and Brazil - Italy, the finals between Serbia - Brazil, and the bronze medal match of Italy - USA.
Not conclusive by any means. the two semi-final matches saw the winning teams actually get slightly outscored in First Ball, but they won the match in Transition.3 In the two medal matches, there was a solid advantage gained by the winning teams in First Ball.
Conclusions
The point of this analysis is less to make a point of this is how you must play volleyball and more to continue previous themes of there are multiple ways to form winning teams. We’ve seen before in the Team Profile articles that successful teams can be built in different ways.
All 4 of these teams were good in First Ball. In many ways, a lot of things about this Women’s World Championships seemed to reaffirm what I bias toward being classic high-level volleyball. The top 4 teams were very good in First Ball, with a slight bias toward offensive prowess, with 1 of the 4 being a dominant defensive team. The two medal matches showcased the importance of sideout. All is well in the world.
In future installments, I’ll dive more into how teams are accomplishing this sideout, because it’s worth examining the different styles of offense being played. For now, we’ll turn attention more to the men’s side on Friday to finish up our examination of sideout, and next week we’ll conclude the major competition analysis with an examination of Transition.
This is slightly different than Kill %, because some receptions are shanks that don’t lead to an attack.
And, FWIW, no matches with the mythical Dominated category where a team manages to win despite losing all 3 sides of the Triangle. Still waiting for that one.
There’s also an interaction with serving here. For example, Brazil slightly outhit Italy in First Ball, but Brazil served in 93 times to Italy’s 82, so Italy had quite a few more chances to score in First Ball.