Here are how four of the key outsides with the top teams in the Big Ten looked from the start of conference play until their respective seasons ended. Output Efficiencies are calculated using data from both the Big & Pac 2016 seasons and look at not only the kills/errors/attempts, but also the value of non-terminal swings. In this case OutputEff differentiates between a perfect dig by the opponent and a perfect cover by the attacking team – or a poor dig versus a great block touch by the opponent – etc. In this sense it’s better than traditional “true efficiency” in that it’s not just about how well your opponent attacks back after you attack – but it also appropriately weights different block touch, dig, and cover qualities as to their league-average value.
What you see above is the trends of these outsides over the course of the season. Foecke continuously improves as the season, as does Haggerty for Wisconsin. Frantti is interesting in that she actually declines up until early November then turns it on as PSU approaches tournament time. Classic Penn State. If Wilhite didn’t hit for over “.600” early in the season, she wouldn’t look like she’s trending down – but you have to keep in mind that her average (just north of .300) kinda blows people out of the water when you look at her consistency.
Personally, while I think this type of stuff is mildly interesting and you can definitely spin a story out of it, it’s not actionable in the sense that it’s going to help a coach make a better decision. However, this same principle could and probably should be applied on an in-season basis to look deeper at the development of players and specific skills. For example, high ball attacking:
You could build something like this for every day in practice. If you goal is to pass better, cool, let’s take your data from practice and graph it for the week and see if whatever changes we’re trying to implement have had their desired effect. Or let’s see if the team is improving as a whole as we make these specific changes:
*the asterisk on 10/29 is because volleymetrics coded both MN matches from that week on the same day, so the date on the file for both says 10/29. That’s why we use Avg. Output Eff.
Anyway, there are thousands of ways to implement something like this – and then turn it into some digestible and actionable for the coaching staff.
Rethinking Volley 