With all of the NCAA volleyball championships of the 2023-24 academic year having been completed -- Texas sweeping Nebraska last December to win the women's indoor crown, UCLA defeating Long Beach State in four yesterday to take the men's indoor title, and USC outpacing UCLA to capture the women's beach championship earlier today -- I am here to officially announce my retirement (or perhaps semi-retirement) from writing this blog.
I have spent nearly 17 years trying to provide a statistical/analytic perspective on volleyball. In recent years, however, I found myself running low on the time, energy, and creativity to provide the quality of content I wanted. You might say I've been "blocked" in trying to generate new ideas. If I think of some kind of new analysis that I find interesting, I may post new entries, but I don't expect to post too much.
Thanks to everyone who has visited the site and read the entries over the years. I didn't receive that many comments, but the ones I did receive were smart and well-argued.
My impression is that data-based services and analytic consultancies have become more common in collegiate and international volleyball over the years. I even had a few NCAA coaches contact me for advice! I particularly want to thank Don Flora who, during his years as Texas Tech women's coach, shared team data with me and showed great interest in any kind of statistical conclusions we could draw.
The links column on the right contains other analytic sites you can visit.
