Rethinking Volley

Introduction Having a lead in a set conveys confidence that we are more likely to win. We should be even more confident if that lead is near the end of the set, unless we are matched against a much better opponent. Using a lot of data and some modeling, we can quantify that confidence into [...]

Madeline Gates - 2019 Stanford University Interactive Dashboard: https://public.tableau.com/views/SeasonTrends/HittingEfficiency?:language=en&:display_count=y&publish=yes&:origin=viz_share_link Is your team getting better or worse as the season progresses? Are your players developing and performing stronger as the year goes on? In the chart above, we take a look at Madeline Gates, the middle from Stanford. We're looking at a rolling average of her [...]

Interactive Dashboard: https://public.tableau.com/views/Expectationvs_Reality/Overall?:language=en&:display_count=y&publish=yes&:origin=viz_share_link This is the direction I think the sport of volleyball needs to go - getting all skills, all contacts, all situations, and all performance evaluation into the single language of points. The same way the NBA has expected points per shot based on the location on the floor + number of defenders, [...]

Interactive Dashboard: https://public.tableau.com/profile/chad.gordon#!/vizhome/Blocking-TheUnsungHero/BlockingAffectsHittingEff In my opinion, blocking is the most "shrugged off" skills in our sport. Guy gets up, bounces a ball in the middle of the court and blocker turns to the coach who promptly gives him the "thumbs up, move on" type of gesture. While you're unlikely to fix your team in the [...]

So, admittedly it's been a while since I posted about Point Win Probability (PWP), which to be honest, I think is pretty sweet. But today, I'm mostly here to steal a good idea from Nate Ngo (whose blog is here and you should 1000% check out if you have not). His issue was that, like [...]

Interactive Dashboard (click me) https://public.tableau.com/views/Step12-PointWinProbability/Stanford-Wisconsin?:language=en&:display_count=y&publish=yes&:origin=viz_share_link (Quick note: all PWP in the chart are for Stanford. Therefore if PWP hits 100%, Stanford won the point. If PWP hits 0%, Wisconsin won the point. Anything above 50% means Stanford has the advantage, anything below...you get the idea. I find it much cleaner to use a single line [...]

So this might be pretty obvious, but I'm going to spend 2 minutes posting this so we're all on the same page. Chris Tamas of Illinois reminds his team of the only goal: "three sets, by two points" and while this may hold true in a practical sense - from a statistical sense, beating a [...]

You may be seeing terms like Expected Value (eV), Win Probabilities, or other terms floating around this blog. I'd just like to take a quick second to help translate what's being talked about. Expected Value (eV) - its notation appears similar to a standard hitting efficiency. It's shown as a rate, meaning we divide by [...]

**Steve Aronson is an assistant coach for girl's high school and club volleyball in Massachusetts. He is passionate about volleyball and now content to coach, analyze, and watch. With a background in statistics, data science, and machine learning, he strives to raise the analytics bar in volleyball and help others along this journey.** If we [...]