Nike Big Four Tournament in Austin

Four of the nation's top collegiate women's volleyball teams gathered in Austin, Texas this past weekend and it was the host University of Texas Longhorns compiling the best record of the teams, 2-0. All of the match-ups were prearranged, rather than a format of semi-finals and finals being used. UT's wins were both close: 25-27, 25-17, 13-25, 25-21, 15-10 over Penn State, and 29-27, 18-25, 25-16, 27-25 over Stanford. Box scores of the four matches are available at the following links: Texas-Penn State, Texas-Stanford, Florida-Stanford, and Florida-Penn State.

My initial interest was in looking at which players hit at a consistently high level over their teams' two matches. I created the following chart (on which you can click to enlarge), focusing on players who took 20 or more hitting attempts in a match. Highlighted in blue are players who hit (roughly) .300 or better in both of their matches.

Four middle-blockers hit well in both of their matches: Penn State's Katie Slay, Florida's Chloe Mann, and Stanford's Inky Ajanaku and Carly Wopat. Cardinal outside-hitter Brittany Howard recorded attack percentages of .290 and .300 against Florida and Texas, respectively.

Oddly, the team that compiled the best record, Texas, had no players who hit for a high percentage in both matches, and the team with the worst record, Stanford, had three such players. I therefore decided to probe Stanford's matches a little more closely, as shown in the next chart.

Stanford was outplayed by Florida across the statistical indicators examined, although not by a lot. The Gators' winning score of 28-26, 25-17, 18-25, 25-22 thus seems consistent with how the teams played. The Texas-Stanford match was a different story. Stanford statistically outperformed UT in three categories -- hitting, blocking, and digging -- yet still lost in four. The "Cardinal sin" occurred in the serving game. Stanford botched 16 serves against Texas, while scoring only three aces. The Longhorns, in contrast, had much more balanced numbers of aces (9) and errors (11).

Texas also benefited from errant opposition serving vs. Penn State, as the Nittany Lions amassed 22 service errors (with six aces). It may be a case where the Longhorns' reputation precedes them; out of respect or fear of the UT offensive attack, opposing teams may feel it necessary to serve extremely aggressively.

Hawai'i Tops Texas on 2013 Opening Night

Defending NCAA champion and preseason No. 1 Texas had neither an answer for host Hawai'i's offensive prowess nor much of an attack itself (except for Game 2), as the Rainbow Wahine prevailed in four games, 25-19, 19-25, 27-25, 25-16 (box score).

Youth was served for Hawai'i, as frosh OH Nikki Taylor (10-1-18) and soph MB Jade Vorster (7-0-14) each hit .500 for the match, committing only one hitting error between them. Junior middle Kalei Adolpho added a .421 night for the 'Bows (11-3-19). The following graph shows each team's hitting percentage per game, with the winning team in each game listed at the bottom. You can click on the graphic to enlarge it.

Frosh OH Pilar Victoria (10-3-23, .304) was a rare bright spot for the Longhorns.

In Friday night's other marquee match (in my view), USC defeated host Purdue in four.

Opening of 2013 Women's College Season

The 2013 women's college season gets underway today. ESPN "W" (for women's sports) writer Mechelle Voepel has a pair of articles (here and here) previewing the season, so I'll just add some brief remarks at this point. I've put together the following chart, showing the preseason polls for three major outlets: the American Volleyball Coaches Association, ESPN W, and Volleyball Magazine (you can click on each column heading to be taken to the full reports on the preseason polls). The polls are identical in their top three. Further, the same 10 schools appear in all three polls' Top 10.

	AVCA	ESPN W	VB Mag
1	Texas	Texas	Texas
2	Penn St.	Penn St.	Penn St.
3	Stanford	Stanford	Stanford
4	USC	Minnesota	USC
5	Washington	USC	Minnesota
6	Minnesota	Florida	Washington
7	Michigan	Oregon	Michigan
8	Oregon	Michigan	Nebraska
9	Florida	Washington	Oregon
10	Nebraska	Nebraska	Florida

Defending NCAA champion Texas, which returns front-court stars Haley Eckerman (outside), Bailey Webster (outside), and Khat Bell (middle), is the consensus preseason No. 1. The Longhorns' main loss from last year is versatile Sha'Dare McNeal, who hit .364 and recorded 2.41 digs per game as a senior last year, both second-highest on the team (on hitting percentage, I'm excluding a player with only 25 attempts all season). In addition, McNeal's 0.85 blocks per game were third on the squad. Texas opens up the season tonight at Hawai'i, in a match that starts after midnight for those of you in the Eastern and Central time zones.

Another interesting opening-night match features USC at Purdue. The Trojans return nearly all of their top players from a year ago, led by OH Samantha Bricio. The same can't be said for the Boilermakers, with Ariel Turner having moved on. Turner alone took 37% of Purdue's hitting attempts  a season ago (1622/4347); further, no other Boilermaker was within 1,000 spike attempts of Turner.

40 Years of Following Volleyball

The summer of 2013 marks my 40th year of following volleyball. The following photo montage shows me in Israel in 1973, as I traveled with my father, a USA team organizer, to the Maccabiah Games, an international competition for Jewish athletes. Among the players pictured in action is Ed Becker, a  former UCLA star who was once mentioned in Sports Illustrated (in the middle, going from left to right, of the five USA players shown).

Further information on my volleyball background is available here. With next week's start to the NCAA women's season, I look forward to my 41st year of following the sport and my seventh year of analyzing and writing for this blog.

Guest Contributor Adam White Suggests New Statistic: "Gift" Points to the Opponent

Adam White is a graduate student at Bowling Green State University. Here is his idea:

I call the statistic “gifts.” Like any worthy measure, gifts are simple to understand and to calculate, yet aspire to novel explanatory force.

Gifts are the difference between a team’s total points scored and the points they scored on kills. This reflects the number of non-kill or “unearned” points handed to them by the other team.

For example, say [Texas Tech] beats BGSU 25-21, but the Falcons outhit the Red Raiders 15-14. This entails that BGSU gave TTU 11 gifts (25-14), while TTU gave BGSU only 6 gifts (21-15).

The point is that, in this case at least, the gifts explain the TTU victory better than do the kills. (This is an exception, but not a rarity.)

“Gifts per set” is probably the best way to track and analyze the measure. Teams would have both a “gifts received” and a “gifts given” figure.

Arguably "gifts given" measures the consistency and effectiveness of a team’s all-around ball handling. A team with a high "gift received" average is likely capable of longer rallies.

These assumptions have been supported by my modest research, as the BGSU varsity team has better gift statistics than does the group of very mediocre sandlot players I measured.

UC Irvine Block Party Sweeps BYU in Men's Final

The University of California Irvine repeated as men's NCAA volleyball champions last night, sweeping Brigham Young University in three tightly contested games, 25-23, 25-22, 26-24, in Los Angeles.

UCI was even more dominant on paper, as the Anteaters outblocked and outhit the Cougars by wide margins. At the net, UCI prevailed 17-6 in total team blocks (block assists divided by two, plus solo blocks). Whereas the Anteaters' Colin Mehring was the nation's top blocker on a contending team this season by my calculation, it was his teammate, junior middle-blocker Scott Kevorken, who stepped up in the championship match with one solo block and 11 assists.

Irvine's blocking dominance last night was very different from the teams' relatively even blocking in their two regular-season head-to-head matches, both of which were won by BYU. (Box scores for the three matches are available by clicking on the relevant link: first regular-season match, second regular-season match, NCAA title match). I have graphed BYU and UCI's total team blocks in the teams' three head-to-head matches:

UCI's blocking prowess was the story of the match, all the way down to the final points. The Anteaters trailed 24-21 in Game 3, meaning the Cougars had three set points. However, Irvine ran off five straight points to win 26-24, the last three all coming on blocks!

Irvine outhit BYU for the match, .383-.274. In Game 1, UCI recorded 17 kills with only 4 errors in 29 attempts, for a .448 hitting percentage. In Game 2, the Anteaters reduced their hitting errors even further, again scoring 17 kills, but committing only 2 miscues (on 35 attempts) for a .429 percentage. Kevorken and Mehring each had identical hitting lines for UCI: 7 kills, 1 error, 10 attempts, .600 percentage. Outside hitter Connor Hughes (11-3-22, .364) and opposite (right-side) hitter Zack La Cavera (11-1-21, .476) also contributed offensively for the Anteaters.

BYU OH Taylor Sander, Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Player of the Year and first-team All-America, hit .308 on the night (20-8-39). However, six of his eight hitting errors resulted from being blocked. The Cougars' highly touted frosh opposite Ben Patch had a rougher night (7-5-22, .091), with four of his five hitting errors due to being blocked.

NCAA Men's Final Four Begins Thursday

The Net Set offers some fairly statistically oriented previews of the Loyola (Chicago)-UC Irvine and Penn State-BYU semifinal matches of this year's NCAA men's Final Four.