Friday, February 18, 2011

JQAS Article on Men's European VB

The most recent issue of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports includes an article entitled "Study of the Technical and Tactical Variables Determining Set Win or Loss in Top-Level European Men’s Volleyball," by David Rodriguez-Ruiz and colleagues. The abstract is available here; full-text access requires a subscription, but guest privileges to view an article are available. Based on study of the 2009 European Men’s Volleyball Championship, the central finding appears to be that whereas "attacking [tended] to be the highest point-scoring technical action," the block took on greater importance the closer the match.

NOTE:  Leo van Hal was kind enough to share his reaction to the aforementioned study, in the Comments section (link below). Leo also had a graph to accompany his comments, which doesn't work in the Comments section. I am thus reproducing his graph here:


2023 NCAA Women's Preview

Sixth-four teams are alive at the moment, but it sure looks like Nebraska (28-1) and Wisconsin (26-3) will meet for a third time this season...