Nebraska Wins Debut Big 10 Match, Edging Penn State; A Look at Hitting Allocations and Success

Last night's first-ever Big 10 conference match for Nebraska, as the Cornhuskers hosted none other than four-time defending national champion Penn State, lived up to its billing, as Nebraska won in five, 25-18, 25-16, 23-25, 19-25, 15-10 (article, box score). The Huskers actually seemed to be on their way to a sweep, leading (as best I recall from listening to the online radio broadcast) 16-11 in Game 3. However, Penn State got hot for the next game and a half, before Nebraska regrouped in Game 5.

One noteworthy statistical element of the match was that Nebraska outblocked Penn State, 11 to 9. The Nittany Lions very rarely get outblocked.

The Huskers also outhit the Lions, .229-.182. Many times on this blog, I've plotted players' hitting percentages by how many spike attempts they've taken, the idea being that a team presumably would want players with high hitting percentages (which makes the bars in the graph higher) to also be taking a lot of attempts (which makes the bars wider). Previously, however, I've only plotted one team per graph (example from last year).

For last night's Penn State-Nebraska match, I thought it would be interesting to view the two teams together, with the bars arranged left-to-right from highest to lowest player hitting percentages (you may click on the graph to enlarge it).

For whatever it's worth, Nebraska (red bars) seemed to have a core of players who took a lot of spike attempts and hit in the high .200s. Penn State's hitting, in contrast, was concentrated among some players who hit really well and others who didn't.