I recently visited the NBC Olympics website to learn about developments in the volleyball competitions taking place later this summer. While there, I found this article (accompanied by extensive statistics) on the final women's Olympic qualifying tournament, which concluded recently. Among the statistics listed in the final tournament standings, were each team's points scored and allowed, and games (or sets) won and allowed (the first reference to "Points" in the chart appears to refer to points in the standings, 2 for a win and 1 for a loss; points won and loss in the rally scoring are separate). Volleyball, like tennis and perhaps other sports, uses an aggregative or hierarchical scoring system. First, a team wins points . Upon winning 25 points in a game (15 in a Game 5), with at least a two-point margin, a team would then win a game (also known as a set ). Winning three games would then give a team the match . Certainly there would be a positive corre

In anticipation of tonigh't NCAA men's volleyball final between No. 1 Penn State and upstart Pepperdine (which only made the field via a late surge through the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament), user "nomas" on the VolleyTalk discussion board offers this analysis of the match-up . One of the salient issues is that Penn State has not played that tough of a schedule during the season, thus likely inflating the Nittany Lions' statistical prowess. As seen on Penn State's schedule , the Lions have played only a few matches against traditionally strong teams from the Pacific (Hawaii, UCLA, and Long Beach State), and two of those three matches were back in early January.