2012 Olympics: Women's Indoor Midway Through Pool Play

Starting today with women's indoor volleyball, we'll look at how leading teams are doing. The U.S. women are 3-0 in pool play, with four-game wins over South Korea and Brazil, and a sweep over China (albeit with two of the games won by the minimum two-point margin). Below, I've annotated a screen-capture from the London 2012 website on team hitting percentages (you can click on the graphics to enlarge them). On the website, one can click on a given team's red dot with the plus sign (far right-hand side) to bring out the statistics for that team's individual players.

Fans who watch a lot of U.S. college volleyball will probably be more familiar with the terminology of Kills, Errors, and Total Attempts in computing hitting percentage or efficiency: (K - E) / TA. I have no idea what "shots" refer to; some players have more shots than spikes, whereas others have fewer.

Middle blockers usually are among a team's leaders in hitting percentage (because sets to them are more often planned and less often in desperation, relative to outside hitters). The U.S. is no exception, with Foluke Akinradewo (formerly of Stanford) and Christa Harmotto (formerly of Penn State) each hitting around .400 (or 40%). Fellow Nittany Lion alum Megan Hodge (OH) didn't get in until midway through the China match, but did she ever produce!

Among hitters with at least 60 attempts, the hitting-percentage leaders thus far into the Games are:

1. Simona Gioli (Italy) .433
2. Yeon-Koung Kim (S. Korea) .395
3. Nataliya Goncharova (Russian Fed.) .362

Destinee Hooker and Jordan Larson of the U.S. rank fourth and fifth, respectively.

If one goes to the London 2012 website and clicks on the Blocks tab, one finds that the U.S. (2.64) is tied for third (with Italy) in blocks/game (or set), behind Russia (3.90) and China (3.27). Total block attempts are divided into blocks (sending the ball straight down to the opponent's floor for an immediate defensive point), faults (errors such as touching the net), and rebounds (balls sent back to the hitter's side, but kept in play, I assume).

Serve reception has been a problem for the U.S., which currently ranks seventh in this category. By clicking the Reception tab on the London 2012 website, one finds that total attempts are divided into "excellent receptions," faults (errors), and ordinary receptions. Presumably, excellent receptions are those that give the setter multiple viable options of whom to set. Overall success rate is obtained by dividing excellent receptions by total attempts. I think a potentially better statistic would be taking (excellent receptions - faults) and then dividing by total attempts.

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During the beach match I'm currently watching, Kessy/Ross (U.S.) vs. Liliana/Baquerizo (Spain), one of the NBC announcers alluded to one of the players "averaging the highest speed per serve of the tournament." I don't know if those data are available online, but I'll try to find them.