Belated 2020 NCAA Women's Brackets Announced for COVID-Disrupted Season

Typically, the NCAA women's tournament is held every December. Against the backdrop of COVID-19, however, this has not been a typical season. Back in September 2020, the NCAA moved forward on a plan to shift several fall championships to spring, including women's volleyball. Some conferences (such as the Big 10 and Pac 12) opted to delay their entire women's volleyball seasons from fall 2020 to winter/spring 2021. Others (such as the Big 12) stuck to the usual framework and played the bulk of their schedule in fall 2020, but added some 2021 matches to stay sharp for the national tourney. The SEC played a little less than half of its conference schedule in the fall and a little more than half of it in the spring. Throughout this makeshift season, of course, numerous matches were postponed or cancelled.

The regular season has now been played and here we are, ready for the NCAA tournament. Only 48 teams (down from the usual 64) will participate and the tournament will take place entirely in Omaha, Nebraska. The brackets are available here. 

Wisconsin, last year's national runner-up, has remained true to form, going 15-0 in a conference-only season and sweeping all but three matches (which the Badgers won 3-1). Beyond the Badgers, however, the field features several oddities.

Stanford, winner of the last two national titles (and three of the last four), is absent. The Cardinal was able to play only 10 matches this season and went 2-8.

Kentucky is seeded No. 2, higher than I can recall the Wildcats ever being seeded (a little research shows UK was the No. 4 seed in 2017). UK went 19-1 in a conference-only schedule, its only loss coming to Florida (the No. 8 national seed, and with whom the Wildcats split two matches). Kentucky hit .361 as a team for the season, the highest in the land.

Perennial national contender (and seven-time champion) Penn State is seeded No. 13. Many of the other high seeds are familiar faces (No. 3 Minnesota, No. 4 Texas, No. 5 Nebraska, No. 6 Washington).

Readers of this blog will know that I developed a statistic in 2011, the Conference-Adjusted Combined Offensive-Defensive (CACOD), to gauge teams' prospects for doing well in the NCAA tournament based on their regular-season hitting percentages and opposition hitting percentages. It is explained here. For context, no team with a CACOD below 1.91 (which was recorded by 2016 champion Stanford) has won the NCAA women's tournament. CACOD values for the top four national seeds are as follows.

Team	Hitting%	Opp Hit%	Ratio	Conf Adj	Final CACOD
Wisconsin	.342	.128	2.67	x 1.25	3.34
Kentucky	.361	.144	2.51	x 1.00	2.51
Minnesota	.262	.191	1.37	x 1.25	1.71
Texas	.333	.168	1.98	x 1.20	2.38

Wisconsin's CACOD of 3.34 is the highest ever recorded, surpassing the 3.09 recorded by Penn State in the 2014 regular season. That Nittany Lion squad went on to win the NCAA tournament. Hence, if all goes according to form, the victorious fans (however many of them are admitted for live attendance) will be singing "On Wisconsin."

If you're looking for possible upsets, some other teams with high CACOD values are:

• Western Kentucky .355/.122, ratio = 2.91 (x 1.00 for Conference USA), CACOD = 2.91
• High Point .296/.090, ratio = 3.29 (x .75 for Big South), CACOD = 2.47

Action gets underway a week from Wednesday, on April 14.

Stanford Sweeps Wisconsin for NCAA Women's Title, Aided by Multifaceted Blocking Game

With Stanford's win over Wisconsin for the NCAA national women's championship about a month ago coming so easily, 25-16, 25-17, 25-20, it was hard at first to come up with a statistical angle. The Cardinal, led by 6-foot-6 senior outside-hitter Kathryn Plummer's torrid spiking (.459 on 22 kills and 5 errors on 37 attempts), outhit the Badgers, .358-.152 (box score). Madeleine Gates, a Stanford graduate transfer who finished her degree at UCLA, also came up big (.529, 10-1-17). I've already written a lot on Plummer's hitting, however, so I wanted to focus on something else. Then, an idea from five years ago popped into my mind.

As I wrote in February 2015 then-Penn State men's assistant coach Jay Hosack (now head men's coach at George Mason) noted on the Internet-radio show The Net Live that, "blocking should be evaluated more broadly than via direct stuff-blocks for points." For example, blockers could slow the ball down from a spike attempt, making it easier for the players behind the blockers to dig the ball. Guests on that episode of The Net Live referred to slowing the ball as "control blocking." I prefer the term "dampening" the spike attempt.* Here is a schematic I created to illustrate dampening:

Blockers can also ricochet the ball back to the attacking team's side of the net, with the original attacking team keeping the ball in play. A "block back in play" probably would not be as advantageous to the blocking team as would a dampening, as the original attacking team can set up again for a spike. However, a block back in play would buy the blocking team some time to set up to receive the next spike attempt.

I had never gotten around to examining Hosack's idea, as one could not do so simply from box scores and would have to engage in careful observation and charting while watching matches. Perhaps some teams and volleyball statistical services compile dampenings and block-backs, but I'm not aware of how to access these numbers. I had forgotten about Hosack's idea until, for whatever reason, it re-emerged in my mind after the Stanford-Wisconsin match. I decided now was the time to follow through on it using video of the match on YouTube.

With pencil in hand, I began recording Stanford and Wisconsin's dampenings and block-backs, as shown in the following graph. I also plotted stuff blocks (listed in the box score simply as "blocks). As can be seen, Stanford outperformed Wisconsin in all three areas -- stuff blocks, dampenings, and block-backs -- on the night.

If one has the time and interest in charting dampenings and block-backs, I would recommend doing so. The three measures together yield a richer measure of blocking success beyond just stuff blocks. Conceivably, a team could compile very few stuff blocks, but a large number of dampenings, for example. Looking at the box score alone, one would not appreciate the team's blocking success.

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Every year since 2011, I have computed my Conference-Adjusted Combined Offensive-Defensive (CACOD) measure to predict success in the NCAA women's tourney. I noted before this year's tournament that the lowest CACOD score for a team that went on to win the national title was 1.91 (Stanford, 2016). Stanford's was 2.05 this season, whereas Wisconsin's was 1.85. Hence, had the Badgers defeated the Cardinal, Wisconsin would have been become the team with the lowest CACOD to win the championship.

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*According to a scenario from the NCAA manual, a defender fielding a ball after a dampening block still receives a dig in the statistics, even though the ball has been slowed down:

Team White player No. 1 attacks the ball. The ball goes off Team Blue player No. 1 and ... (b) goes to Team Blue player No. 2 who keeps the ball in play. RULING: ... In (b), Team Blue player No. 1 is not awarded a block but Team Blue player No. 2 is awarded a dig.

Preview of NCAA Women's Final Four (2019)

This year's NCAA women's Final Four, which begins shortly, features the Bears of Baylor, two of the B1G's three burrowing animals -- the Wisconsin Badgers and Minnesota Gophers* -- and a color, the Stanford Cardinal.

By most accounts, Minnesota would probably be the team considered least likely to win the national title. Anecdotally, in watching some Gopher matches this season, my sense was that blocking was the team's strength.

I therefore decided to compare the Final Four teams on their blocks per opportunity. The number of opportunities a team has to score points via a stuff block is the number of hit attempts by opponents, removing the number of spikes hit out of bounds or into the net. Such attempts gone awry can be calculated by taking opponents' aggregate hitting errors and subtracting those errors due to your own aggregate blocks.

These calculations revealed all of the Final Four teams to be extremely similar in the proportion of blockable (i.e., not out of bounds) balls they actually blocked. These proportions showed that each team blocked 8% of their aggregate opponents' spike attempts they could have blocked (ranging from .080-.087).

Where the teams differed more dramatically is in the number of opposition spike attempts they allowed: Minnesota 4453, Wisconsin 3834, Baylor 3428, and Stanford 4070. At first glance, at least, even when Baylor and Wisconsin (relative to Minnesota and Stanford) don't score kills, they appear to pressure their opponents enough to take them out of system and prevent them from mounting attacks.

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*The other being the Michigan Wolverines.

Brief Observations on NCAA Women's Elite Eight Day

Baylor and Washington are tied at one game apiece (Baylor 25-20, U-Dub 25-21). Baylor has hit well in Games 1 (.538, 16 kills, only 2 errors, on 26 attempts) and 2 (.355, 15-4-31).  Washington had only three hitting errors in Game 2 (.367, 14-3-30). The Huskies' Samantha Drechsel is hitting .625 after two games (12-2-16)... Bears take Game 3, 25-19, on continued torrid hitting (.615, 17- 1-26 in Game 3)... Baylor closes out match 25-18 to take program's first trip to Final Four. Bears hit .444 in Game 4 (16-4-27), .479 for match (67-11-117)...

Wisconsin records a 3-0 sweep of Nebraska (25-18, 25-22, 25-19) for the third time this season to advance... No suspense in the last two matches of the day, either -- not even any deuce games -- as Minnesota sweeps Louisville (25-21, 25-14, 25-16) and Stanford does the same to Penn State (25-22, 25-15, 25-17). Stanford's Kathryn Plummer records another high hitting percentage on a high volume of attempts (.512, 24-2-43).

Brief Observations on NCAA Women's Sweet Sixteen Day (2019)

It was a day of upsets and near-upsets and the NCAA women's field winnowed from 16 to eight teams. No. 2 seed Texas dropped the first two games to Louisville, won the next two to even things up, and then fell to the Cardinals in Game 5, 15-12. Three other matches went the distance, with the higher-seeded team prevailing in each case.

Utah had given Stanford trouble in the regular season, never winning a match from the Cardinal, but going five games on October 20 and four on November 22. Friday's NCAA match-up was no different, as Stanford and Utah battled five games, the Cardinal prevailing 15-11 in the decider. Here at VolleyMetrics, we've been keeping an eye on Kathryn Plummer's heavy swing volume for Stanford. Friday night, she registered one of best performances of the season, hitting .389 on 29 kills and 8 attack errors in 54 attempts.

Two other five-game survivors were No. 7 Minnesota over No. 10 Florida, and No. 11 Penn State over unseeded Cincinnati.

Top-seeded Baylor has eliminated No. 16-seed Purdue in today's opening match, 25-12, 23-25, 25-15, 25-17 (stat sheet). To me, the big story was Baylor's offensive depth. With junior outside-hitter Yossiana Pressley, this season's Big 12 Player of the Year, hitting a subpar .194 on 15 kills and 8 errors in 36 attack attempts (she hit .275 on the season), the Bears more than made up for it with strong hitting performances by Gia Milana (.500, 13-3-20), Marieke van der Mark (.464, 16-3-28), and Shelly Stafford (.421, 9-1-19).

Saturday's match-ups, with trips to the Final Four on the line, include: Baylor-Washington, Wisconsin-Nebraska, Stanford-Penn State, and Minnesota-Louisville.

2019 NCAA Women's Tourney Preview

This year's NCAA women's tournament, which gets underway Friday, features some of the "usual suspects" among the leading teams, but also some newcomers (click here for bracket). The usual suspects include No. 2 national seed Texas, No. 3 Stanford, No. 4 Wisconsin, and No. 5 Nebraska, whereas the upstarts include No. 1 Baylor and No. 6 Pittsburgh.

Baylor and Texas, the top two seeds, are both in the Big 12 conference, and they split their two matches this season. Baylor's October 23 loss in Austin was, in fact, the 25-1 Bears' only defeat of the season. Along with Baylor's November 20 win over Texas in Waco, the Bears also own an impressive victory over Wisconsin in Madison, although it was a long time ago (September 6).

On my longtime Conference-Adjusted Combined Offensive-Defensive (CACOD)metric, Baylor clocks in at 2.16 (.281 team hitting percentage divided by .156 hitting percentage allowed, with this ratio multiplied by 1.20, the adjustment factor for the Big 12). In the eight years I've calculated the CACOD, all the teams that won an NCAA title had at least a value of 1.91. Hence, Baylor's CACOD is consistent with a possible championship, but far from definitive in that regard.

Texas, 21-3 with losses at Stanford, at Rice, and at Baylor (all in five games), has a CACOD slightly below Baylor's at 2.12 (.319/.180, times 1.20).

Stanford, the defending national champion and runaway pick to repeat, suffered some surprising early-season losses, but finished well in Pac 12 conference play and ended up 24-4. The Cardinal's CACOD is 2.05 (.289/.176, times the Pac 12's adjustment factor of 1.25).

A towering figure for Stanford is 6-foot-6 senior outside hitter Kathryn Plummer, named by multiple sources the national player of the year in 2017 and 2018. Plummer has had an interesting 2019 season, interrupted by 10 missed matches (11 if you count one in which she had no hitting attempts and only served) due to what was consistently reported as an "undisclosed injury." The following graphic (on which you can click to enlarge) shows Plummer's total number of hitting attempts and hitting percentages in each of her matches.

Plummer started out the season on fire, hitting above .400 in several matches, sometimes with huge numbers of hitting attempts. The Texas match epitomizes this trend, as she took a whopping 57 swings while still maintaining a .474 hitting percentage. Following the Texas match, she continued to take roughly 50 hitting attempts per match, but her hitting percentages went down (all the way to .067 on 45 attempts). At that point, she began her injury leave. I have no insider information on her injury, but one cannot help wonder if her high volume of hitting attempts had something to do with it. Upon Plummer's return, she recorded some of her best hitting percentages when her swings were reduced (e.g., .636 on 22 attempts at Arizona). It will be interesting to see what Plummer's workload will be in the tournament.

No. 4 Wisconsin also had an interesting season. After suffering four non-conference losses (one each to Marquette and Baylor, and two to Washington), the Badgers began steamrolling through the B1G. Wisconsin went into State College, Pennsylvania on November 29 with only a single blemish on its conference record (a bit of a shocker at Ohio State) and a chance to complete the impressive feat of sweeping two matches each from Minnesota, Nebraska, and Penn State. And it looked like the Badgers would do it, easily winning the first two games from the Nittany Lions, while hitting .640 and .395 as a team. However Wisconsin's hitting percentage plummeted to .000 (i.e., having as many hitting errors as kills) in each of Games 3 and 4, and rising only to .107 in Game 5. The result was a five-game loss to Penn State. The Badgers, with a CACOD of 1.85 (.294/.198, times the B1G adjustment of 1.25), still finished first in the conference with an 18-2 record.

No. 5 seed Nebraska has the highest CACOD among the top seeds, with a 2.26 (.269/.149, times 1.25).

No. 6 Pitt finished 29-1, the Panthers' only loss coming in five games to Penn State in the Steel City. Two days earlier, however, Pitt swept Penn State in State College. The Panthers' CACOD is 2.11 (.276/.144, times the ACC's adjustment of 1.10).

FiveThirtyEight Tackles Women's College Volleyball

The website FiveThirtyEight, which offers quantitative analyses of politics*, sports, and culture, today turns its attention to women's college volleyball. The article is not as statistically laden as a lot of other FiveThirtyEight pieces, but has some numerical analysis. Mainly, the article looks at leading teams' returning talent, presenting the percentage of each team's total kills, assists, digs, blocks, and aces from last year that are accounted for by players returning this year. For example, of the 1,791 total kills Cardinal hitters recorded last year, 85.1% were collected by players returning this year.

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*The website's name comes from the number of electoral votes in U.S. presidential elections.