Alexis Lebedew on Evaluating Setters

I recently received an e-mail from Alexis Lebedew of the Australian Institute of Sport, bringing to my attention some of his writings. Lebedew's focus is the evaluation of setting, a skill that has gone relatively unanalyzed over the years. The statistic of a setting "assist" exists, but because it represents the number of balls leading to kills, it overlaps considerably with hitting statistics.

In a piece entitled, "A Reconceptualisation of Traditional Volleyball Statistics to Provide a Coaching Tool for Setting" (link), Lebedew proposes a way to rate the quality of sets by taking into account not just the spike attempt following the set, but also the pass preceding the set. In short, setters are most rewarded for making "lemonade" from a "lemon" pass. As Lebedew states more technically, "...the combination of a [high-quality] spike and a [poor] pass has the top Rating... within the ‘Excellent’ outcome."

In fact, sets can be graded on a scale of 0-12, based on combinations of quality ratings for pass and spike. Lebedew notes that coaches who are used to grading passing and hitting performances on a metric different from his own (e.g., rating hit attempts on a 3- rather than 4-point scale) will still be able to construct a meaningful scale for setting, although the top value may differ from 12.

Lebedew also attempted to validate his setting metric in two ways. He first showed that computer software designed to link passes and hit attempts within the same sequences to derive set attempts only rarely missed a set attempt when compared to video footage. Second, he charted teams' percentages of sets (games) won for different averages of setting proficiency. For example, teams won roughly 95% of time when their set quality averaged 9 or higher, roughly 90% of the time when it averaged 8.5 or higher, etc., down through roughly 55% when averaging 6 or higher on setting. Lebedew encourages coaches and setters to strive for setting-proficiency averages of around 7.5-8.

All of the data were from international beach volleyball, which qualifies the generalizability of the findings in some important ways. With two-person teams, of course, there's no way to assess the setter's savviness in choosing which hitting-eligible teammate to set (as noted by Lebedew). Also, at levels of play beneath international caliber, more realistic setting-proficiency aspirations than the aforementioned 7.5-8 may need to be established.