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.
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Monday, August 26, 2019
Previewing the 2019 NCAA Women's Season
ESPN-W previews what it considers the top women's college volleyball teams and players in this upcoming season... Meanwhile, here is the AVCA pre-season national poll. Defending NCAA champion Stanford is a near-unanimous pick to repeat, while five B1G teams make the top eight (Nebraska 2, Minnesota 3, Wisconsin 5, Illinois 6, and Penn State 8). Texas (4) and Kentucky (7) complete the top eight.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Long Beach State Repeats as NCAA Men's Champ
Having taken three months to digest this year's NCAA men's title match between Hawai'i and Long Beach State, I'm ready to provide my statistical analysis. These teams were ranked as the top two squads entering the national final and they were extremely evenly matched.
Long Beach State* and Hawai'i played three late-season matches leading into the NCAA tourney -- the final two matches (here and here) of the Big West conference season (played in Long Beach) and in the final of the conference tournament (in Honolulu). All three matches went five games and all three were won by the home team.
The Beach hosted the NCAA final round and the home-court advantage held true to form. The final went four games instead of five, but each game was close. Ultimately, Long Beach State successfully defended its national title, 23-25, 25-22, 25-22, 25-23 (box score).
For the second straight year, it was the T. J. DeFalco show for The Beach, as the 6-4 senior hitter was unstoppable. Last year, it was DeFalco's combination of hitting and digging that was crucial to Long Beach State's championship-match win over UCLA. This year, DeFalco's dig total in the title match was a modest 5. However, his hitting line in the box score, 20-4-31 (K-E-TA) for a .516 percentage, was scintillating.
As Vinnie Lopes noted over at Off the Block, DeFalco "became the second pin-hitter to have back-to-back NCAA Tournament matches with at least a .500 attack percentage during the 25-point rally scoring era."
As (or more) impressive to me than DeFalco's statistical line was the variety of locations from which he was scoring all those kills. I studied the video of the match** and attempted to note via diagrams of a volleyball court the physical locations of all of DeFalco's attack attempts (where he took off on his jump and the ball's trajectory and where it landed) .
The first graphic below shows the diagram for Games 1 and 2, and the second graphic, for Games 3 and 4. You can click on them to enlarge them. Before looking at the diagrams, however, here are some explanations of the symbols and notation:
As you can see, DeFalco hit successfully from the left, the right, and the center; from the net and from behind the 3-meter (~10-foot) attack line. He drilled kills straight to the floor, and engineered deflections out of bounds to the side, to deep areas beyond the reach of the Warriors' back-row defenders, and back high over his own head, out of bounds beyond The Beach's baseline. He came up with a few off-speed "roll" shots (depicted with dashed lines) for a change of pace.
Hawai'i stuff-blocked DeFalco twice in Game 2 (half of the Rainbow Warriors' four blocks overall on the day), but couldn't shut down any more of his attacks the rest of the way. Via Off the Block, "Hawai’i in the loss had four blocks to tie the record for the fewest blocks in a NCAA Tournament finals during the 25-point rally scoring era."
The Warriors' Rado Parapunov started off looking like he might be able to match DeFalco kill for kill, putting up points on the first eight balls set to him. However, as shown in the following plot, Parapunov could not sustain this pace.
Beyond the spikes and kills, the match was notable in at least two other ways, in my view. One was both teams' inability to hold onto leads and close out games. The Warriors led 21-13 in Game 1, only to have The Beach go on a 9-2 run to close within 23-22. A Hawai'i kill made it 24-22 and the Warriors held on to win 25-23. In Game 2, Long Beach State held a 19-14 lead, but Hawai'i closed within 22-21 and 23-22. Warrior service errors (discussed below) gave The Beach its 23rd and 24th points, however, and a Beach stuff-block ended the game, 25-22.
Hawai'i darted to a 5-0 lead in Game 3. but gave up a 7-2 Beach run to even the score. No team held any larger than a two-point lead for the rest of the game, with Long Beach State scoring the final three points after a 22-all tie -- culminating in a DeFalco left-side kill off the block -- to go up two games to one.
Game 4, finally, was close throughout. After Beach setter Josh Tuaniga recorded an ace serve to put his team up 20-18, the final 10 points of the match were all scored via side-out, leaving The Beach the winner of the game and match, 25-23. Down the stretch, the Tuaniga-to-DeFalco connection was running on all cylinders, with Long Beach State's final two points coming on kills by the latter.
The final match theme (previewed above) involved service errors. Again, per Off the Block, "This was the first time that both teams had at least 20 service errors in a NCAA Tournament finals during the 25-point rally scoring era." Note that, even though several previous NCAA men's finals went five games (2018, 2015, 2011, 2009, to name a few), no teams committed as many service errors as did Hawai'i and The Beach in four games.
With Hawai'i unable to block Long Beach State much at all, it makes sense for the Rainbow Warriors to have served aggressively in an attempt to derail The Beach's offense. However, The Beach had 12 blocks (triple the Warriors' total), so its service-error total is a little harder to understand.
This year's Long Beach State squad was a senior-laden outfit, including DeFalco, Tuaniga, and Kyle Ensing (who put up a 13-4-27, .333 hitting line). These players will be a tough act to follow. Hawai'i also loses some seniors, most notably setter Joe Worsley and hitter Stijn Van Tilburg. Whether one or both of these teams can return to the NCAA final in 2020 remains to be seen, but neither would enjoy a home-court advantage. Next year's host is George Mason University, in Virginia near Washington, DC.
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*Typically, I would vary my usage between school name and nickname. However, in the case of Long Beach State, at the time of the NCAA volleyball final the school was in the process of dropping its long-time nickname of "49ers" and selecting the new one of "Sharks." I will not use either of these nicknames in the above posting, but will occasionally say "The Beach," a common reference to Long Beach State athletics.
**If you want to have a view to these kills without having to watch the entire two-hour-plus match, here are the approximate time-points in this YouTube video to see all of DeFalco's hitting attempts: Game 1 (10:20, 17:06, 18:20, 20:25, 25:07); Game 2 (40:14, 42:13, 48:53, 51:30, 52:15, 52:34, 54:50); Game 3 (1:05:42, 1:06:30, 1:16:50, 1:22:20, 1:30:48, 1:33:36); and Game 4 (1:50:25, 1:57:06, 1:59:05, 2:01:10, 2:14:17, 2:15:12). You're welcome!
Long Beach State* and Hawai'i played three late-season matches leading into the NCAA tourney -- the final two matches (here and here) of the Big West conference season (played in Long Beach) and in the final of the conference tournament (in Honolulu). All three matches went five games and all three were won by the home team.
The Beach hosted the NCAA final round and the home-court advantage held true to form. The final went four games instead of five, but each game was close. Ultimately, Long Beach State successfully defended its national title, 23-25, 25-22, 25-22, 25-23 (box score).
For the second straight year, it was the T. J. DeFalco show for The Beach, as the 6-4 senior hitter was unstoppable. Last year, it was DeFalco's combination of hitting and digging that was crucial to Long Beach State's championship-match win over UCLA. This year, DeFalco's dig total in the title match was a modest 5. However, his hitting line in the box score, 20-4-31 (K-E-TA) for a .516 percentage, was scintillating.
As Vinnie Lopes noted over at Off the Block, DeFalco "became the second pin-hitter to have back-to-back NCAA Tournament matches with at least a .500 attack percentage during the 25-point rally scoring era."
As (or more) impressive to me than DeFalco's statistical line was the variety of locations from which he was scoring all those kills. I studied the video of the match** and attempted to note via diagrams of a volleyball court the physical locations of all of DeFalco's attack attempts (where he took off on his jump and the ball's trajectory and where it landed) .
The first graphic below shows the diagram for Games 1 and 2, and the second graphic, for Games 3 and 4. You can click on them to enlarge them. Before looking at the diagrams, however, here are some explanations of the symbols and notation:
- In all cases, "black" represents the Long Beach State side of the court, from which DeFalco launched his attacks and "green" depicts the Hawai'i side, on which the kills were landing or being deflected out-of-bounds.
- Kills originating from DeFalco's conventional (front-row) attacks appear in yellow, whereas those coming from back-row attacks appear in light-blue. Three slashes "///" over the yellow or light-blue lines signify balls going off the block. A Game-3 Hawai'i net violation that was credited as a kill to DeFalco appears in grey. Finally, his four hitting errors appear in pink (one that might be hard to discern is a DeFalco net-violation in Game 3 that is treated as a hitting error, shown as a small pink rectangle).
- The trajectories are very much approximations. Even viewing multiple replays of some hits, I wasn't always sure of the precise locations of his jump and where the ball landed. Also, I sometimes moved things around a bit to fit all the trajectories on the diagrams.
Hawai'i stuff-blocked DeFalco twice in Game 2 (half of the Rainbow Warriors' four blocks overall on the day), but couldn't shut down any more of his attacks the rest of the way. Via Off the Block, "Hawai’i in the loss had four blocks to tie the record for the fewest blocks in a NCAA Tournament finals during the 25-point rally scoring era."
The Warriors' Rado Parapunov started off looking like he might be able to match DeFalco kill for kill, putting up points on the first eight balls set to him. However, as shown in the following plot, Parapunov could not sustain this pace.
Hawai'i darted to a 5-0 lead in Game 3. but gave up a 7-2 Beach run to even the score. No team held any larger than a two-point lead for the rest of the game, with Long Beach State scoring the final three points after a 22-all tie -- culminating in a DeFalco left-side kill off the block -- to go up two games to one.
Game 4, finally, was close throughout. After Beach setter Josh Tuaniga recorded an ace serve to put his team up 20-18, the final 10 points of the match were all scored via side-out, leaving The Beach the winner of the game and match, 25-23. Down the stretch, the Tuaniga-to-DeFalco connection was running on all cylinders, with Long Beach State's final two points coming on kills by the latter.
The final match theme (previewed above) involved service errors. Again, per Off the Block, "This was the first time that both teams had at least 20 service errors in a NCAA Tournament finals during the 25-point rally scoring era." Note that, even though several previous NCAA men's finals went five games (2018, 2015, 2011, 2009, to name a few), no teams committed as many service errors as did Hawai'i and The Beach in four games.
With Hawai'i unable to block Long Beach State much at all, it makes sense for the Rainbow Warriors to have served aggressively in an attempt to derail The Beach's offense. However, The Beach had 12 blocks (triple the Warriors' total), so its service-error total is a little harder to understand.
This year's Long Beach State squad was a senior-laden outfit, including DeFalco, Tuaniga, and Kyle Ensing (who put up a 13-4-27, .333 hitting line). These players will be a tough act to follow. Hawai'i also loses some seniors, most notably setter Joe Worsley and hitter Stijn Van Tilburg. Whether one or both of these teams can return to the NCAA final in 2020 remains to be seen, but neither would enjoy a home-court advantage. Next year's host is George Mason University, in Virginia near Washington, DC.
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*Typically, I would vary my usage between school name and nickname. However, in the case of Long Beach State, at the time of the NCAA volleyball final the school was in the process of dropping its long-time nickname of "49ers" and selecting the new one of "Sharks." I will not use either of these nicknames in the above posting, but will occasionally say "The Beach," a common reference to Long Beach State athletics.
**If you want to have a view to these kills without having to watch the entire two-hour-plus match, here are the approximate time-points in this YouTube video to see all of DeFalco's hitting attempts: Game 1 (10:20, 17:06, 18:20, 20:25, 25:07); Game 2 (40:14, 42:13, 48:53, 51:30, 52:15, 52:34, 54:50); Game 3 (1:05:42, 1:06:30, 1:16:50, 1:22:20, 1:30:48, 1:33:36); and Game 4 (1:50:25, 1:57:06, 1:59:05, 2:01:10, 2:14:17, 2:15:12). You're welcome!
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
Stanford Tops Nebraska in First Five-Game Championship Final in Nine Years
This year's NCAA women's championship match, completed in mid-December, featured a five-game thriller in which Stanford defeated Nebraska, 28-26, 22-25, 25-16, 15-25, 15-12 (box score). It was the first time an NCAA women's final went five since the classic 2009 tussle in which Penn State came back from two games down vs. Texas to win its third straight national title.
Stanford was the No. 1 seed in the tourney and No. 2 in my own Conference-Adjusted Combined Offensive-Defensive (CACOD) metric. Interesting, Nebraska, though only the No. 7 seed in the eyes of the NCAA Selection Committee, finished first in the CACOD. The final thus presented an attractive match-up, indeed!
Not everything went according to plan. Stanford junior Kathryn Plummer, the 2017 and 2018 AVCA and ESPN-W national player of the year, was kept in check in the final, hitting only .153 (19 kills, 10 errors, 59 total attempts). Frosh middle-blocker Holly Campbell paced the Cardinal attack, hitting .483 (15-1-29).
It was one of those "swing until your arm falls off" nights for Nebraska senior outside-hitter Mikaela Foecke, as she had 71 attack attempts (39.2% of the Huskers' total of 181 attempts). This volume of attempts was reminiscent of Destinee Hooker (Texas) and Megan Hodge (Penn State) in 2009. Foecke hit a solid .296 (26 kills, 6 errors) on these attempts. No Husker was close to Foecke's number of swings, but three had between 26-33 attempts. Among them, the most effective was sophomore middle-blocker Lauren Stivrins (19-3-26, .615).
The rest of this posting focuses on Game 5 of the final (video replay). The Lincoln Journal-Star published an excellent game-by-game review of the match, in which it identified Campbell's clutch kills as the key to Game 5. My take was a little different, namely that Nebraska errors prevented it from opening up some early daylight, which would have been difficult for Stanford to overcome.
With Nebraska up 3-1 in the fifth, Stanford scored four straight points, the last three on Husker hitting errors (Jazz Sweet wide, Sweet blocked, and Foecke long). Nebraska thus trailed 5-3, when it very well could have led by a similar margin. Then, after the Huskers fought back to a 6-6 tie, they missed two straight serves (Foecke at 6-6, Hayley Densberger at 7-7). Nebraska looked a little deflated at that point, falling behind 14-10.
***
Taking a longer-term perspective, three programs are now dominating the sport: Stanford, which won its nation-leading eighth NCAA title; Penn State, which has seven NCAA titles (the most recent in 2014); and Nebraska, with five (including 2015 and 2017). The last six national championships have been captured by one of these three schools.
Next down the list are UCLA (four titles), and USC, Hawaii, and Long Beach State (each with three). One of these teams could rebound back into national contention (USC arguably being the most likely), but it is unlikely any of them will displace the Big Three anytime soon.
This year's two other Final Four squads, BYU and Illinois, are showing some promise. Finally, schools such as Texas (the 2012 winner), Minnesota, Florida, Wisconsin, and Washington often contend each December, but none has gotten it done lately.
Stanford was the No. 1 seed in the tourney and No. 2 in my own Conference-Adjusted Combined Offensive-Defensive (CACOD) metric. Interesting, Nebraska, though only the No. 7 seed in the eyes of the NCAA Selection Committee, finished first in the CACOD. The final thus presented an attractive match-up, indeed!
Not everything went according to plan. Stanford junior Kathryn Plummer, the 2017 and 2018 AVCA and ESPN-W national player of the year, was kept in check in the final, hitting only .153 (19 kills, 10 errors, 59 total attempts). Frosh middle-blocker Holly Campbell paced the Cardinal attack, hitting .483 (15-1-29).
It was one of those "swing until your arm falls off" nights for Nebraska senior outside-hitter Mikaela Foecke, as she had 71 attack attempts (39.2% of the Huskers' total of 181 attempts). This volume of attempts was reminiscent of Destinee Hooker (Texas) and Megan Hodge (Penn State) in 2009. Foecke hit a solid .296 (26 kills, 6 errors) on these attempts. No Husker was close to Foecke's number of swings, but three had between 26-33 attempts. Among them, the most effective was sophomore middle-blocker Lauren Stivrins (19-3-26, .615).
The rest of this posting focuses on Game 5 of the final (video replay). The Lincoln Journal-Star published an excellent game-by-game review of the match, in which it identified Campbell's clutch kills as the key to Game 5. My take was a little different, namely that Nebraska errors prevented it from opening up some early daylight, which would have been difficult for Stanford to overcome.
With Nebraska up 3-1 in the fifth, Stanford scored four straight points, the last three on Husker hitting errors (Jazz Sweet wide, Sweet blocked, and Foecke long). Nebraska thus trailed 5-3, when it very well could have led by a similar margin. Then, after the Huskers fought back to a 6-6 tie, they missed two straight serves (Foecke at 6-6, Hayley Densberger at 7-7). Nebraska looked a little deflated at that point, falling behind 14-10.
***
Taking a longer-term perspective, three programs are now dominating the sport: Stanford, which won its nation-leading eighth NCAA title; Penn State, which has seven NCAA titles (the most recent in 2014); and Nebraska, with five (including 2015 and 2017). The last six national championships have been captured by one of these three schools.
Next down the list are UCLA (four titles), and USC, Hawaii, and Long Beach State (each with three). One of these teams could rebound back into national contention (USC arguably being the most likely), but it is unlikely any of them will displace the Big Three anytime soon.
This year's two other Final Four squads, BYU and Illinois, are showing some promise. Finally, schools such as Texas (the 2012 winner), Minnesota, Florida, Wisconsin, and Washington often contend each December, but none has gotten it done lately.
Friday, December 7, 2018
Prognostic Value of Seeds in NCAA Women's Tourney
The NCAA website has an article on how women's volleyball teams' seeds predict how they do in the tourney. Data are from 2000-onward, which is as long as teams have been seeded 1-16. Two findings I found interesting were as follows (quoting from the article):
Since 2000, the tournament’s No. 1 seed has won the national championship six out of 18 times.
Stanford [No. 11] in 2004 and No. 9 UCLA in 2011 are the only teams seeded lower than No. 6 to win a national championship.
The article also contains a chart at the bottom, listing the final four teams every year from 2000-onward, their seeds, and their ultimate national finish.
Since 2000, the tournament’s No. 1 seed has won the national championship six out of 18 times.
Stanford [No. 11] in 2004 and No. 9 UCLA in 2011 are the only teams seeded lower than No. 6 to win a national championship.
The article also contains a chart at the bottom, listing the final four teams every year from 2000-onward, their seeds, and their ultimate national finish.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
2018 NCAA Women's Tourney Preview
With this year's NCAA women's tournament getting underway tonight, it's time for my annual Conference-Adjusted Combined Offensive-Defensive (CACOD) ratings of the leading teams (explanation). In a nutshell, the CACOD takes each team's season-long hitting percentage, divides it by the aggregate hitting percentage it has allowed its opponents, and then multiplies the result by an adjustment factor for difficulty of conference. Relevant numbers for this year's seeded teams are shown as follows (with the actual CACOD ratio listed under "adjratio"). You can click on the graphic to enlarge it.
The first thing that jumps out at me is that Nebraska is grossly under-seeded (No. 7), relative to its CACOD rating (best in the nation at 2.49). The Cornhuskers' defense, allowing a microscopic .130 opposition hitting percentage, is key to the high CACOD rating, along with the 1.25 adjustment factor for playing in the Big 10. And what a Big 10 season it was, with five of the top eight national seeds coming from the conference! Nebraska went 15-5 in Big 10 play, losing twice to Minnesota (No. 2 national seed), splitting with Illinois (No. 3 seed) and Penn State (No. 8 seed), and losing its only match to No. 6 seed Wisconsin (in five in Madison).
BYU, which charged out of the gate with an early win over Stanford and was ranked No. 1 for most of the season, allowed a comparably low .139 opposition hitting percentage, while the Cougars hit a very high .318. BYU had the highest unadjusted ratio of own to opponents' hitting percentage (2.29), but received no boost to its CACOD value by playing in the West Coast Conference.
The Cougars nearly went undefeated this year, losing only in their regular-season finale at Loyola Marymount. A likely contributor to BYU's late-season difficulties was outside-hitter McKenna Miller's season-ending ACL injury, suffered on November 8 vs. Santa Clara.
BYU's offense relied heavily during the season on two hitters: OH Roni Jones-Perry, who took a team-leading 882 hitting attempts on the season (30.3% of the Cougars' 2,910 attempts as a team), recording a very strong .346 hitting percentage; and Miller, who was second on the team in attack attempts with 602 swings (20.7% of the team total) and had a .307 hitting percentage. (Click here for BYU's season stats sheet.)
With someone who takes one-fifth of your team's swings -- Miller -- out of the lineup, how would the Cougars make up for this absence? Potentially, others among BYU's leading hitters, including middle-blocker Heather Gneiting (.393 hitting percentage on 349 attempts), MB Kennedy Eschenberg (.356 on 374 attempts), and OH Madelyn Robinson (.246 on 281 swings) would receive more sets in Miller's absence. However, as the following graph shows, this is not what has happened.
Comparing individual players' hitting attempts (as a percent of the team's total) in the four matches before Miller's injury (left of grey bar) to hitting attempts in the four matches after, we see that the only hitter who has shown an increase in hitting attempts post-Miller injury is Jones-Perry (green line in graph), who already was the team's iron-woman. Jones-Perry is also among the team leaders in digs (1.93 per game) and blocks (0.67 per game).
On a concluding note (for now), we have seven years of data on the CACOD, so there's a pretty decent track record. One finding is that no team with a CACOD lower than 1.91 has ever won the NCAA title. As they say in television commercials for investment companies, "Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance." Still, I would say that this year's champion is likely to come from the pool of teams with CACOD values of 1.9 or higher.
The first thing that jumps out at me is that Nebraska is grossly under-seeded (No. 7), relative to its CACOD rating (best in the nation at 2.49). The Cornhuskers' defense, allowing a microscopic .130 opposition hitting percentage, is key to the high CACOD rating, along with the 1.25 adjustment factor for playing in the Big 10. And what a Big 10 season it was, with five of the top eight national seeds coming from the conference! Nebraska went 15-5 in Big 10 play, losing twice to Minnesota (No. 2 national seed), splitting with Illinois (No. 3 seed) and Penn State (No. 8 seed), and losing its only match to No. 6 seed Wisconsin (in five in Madison).
BYU, which charged out of the gate with an early win over Stanford and was ranked No. 1 for most of the season, allowed a comparably low .139 opposition hitting percentage, while the Cougars hit a very high .318. BYU had the highest unadjusted ratio of own to opponents' hitting percentage (2.29), but received no boost to its CACOD value by playing in the West Coast Conference.
The Cougars nearly went undefeated this year, losing only in their regular-season finale at Loyola Marymount. A likely contributor to BYU's late-season difficulties was outside-hitter McKenna Miller's season-ending ACL injury, suffered on November 8 vs. Santa Clara.
BYU's offense relied heavily during the season on two hitters: OH Roni Jones-Perry, who took a team-leading 882 hitting attempts on the season (30.3% of the Cougars' 2,910 attempts as a team), recording a very strong .346 hitting percentage; and Miller, who was second on the team in attack attempts with 602 swings (20.7% of the team total) and had a .307 hitting percentage. (Click here for BYU's season stats sheet.)
With someone who takes one-fifth of your team's swings -- Miller -- out of the lineup, how would the Cougars make up for this absence? Potentially, others among BYU's leading hitters, including middle-blocker Heather Gneiting (.393 hitting percentage on 349 attempts), MB Kennedy Eschenberg (.356 on 374 attempts), and OH Madelyn Robinson (.246 on 281 swings) would receive more sets in Miller's absence. However, as the following graph shows, this is not what has happened.
Comparing individual players' hitting attempts (as a percent of the team's total) in the four matches before Miller's injury (left of grey bar) to hitting attempts in the four matches after, we see that the only hitter who has shown an increase in hitting attempts post-Miller injury is Jones-Perry (green line in graph), who already was the team's iron-woman. Jones-Perry is also among the team leaders in digs (1.93 per game) and blocks (0.67 per game).
On a concluding note (for now), we have seven years of data on the CACOD, so there's a pretty decent track record. One finding is that no team with a CACOD lower than 1.91 has ever won the NCAA title. As they say in television commercials for investment companies, "Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance." Still, I would say that this year's champion is likely to come from the pool of teams with CACOD values of 1.9 or higher.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Strange Start to 2018 NCAA Women's Season
The women's college volleyball season is only three weeks old, so the Top 10 teams in the AVCA pre-season poll shouldn't have too many losses at this point, should they?
Well, as shown in the following chart, the number of Top 10 teams who are still undefeated is... ONE. The number of these teams with three or more losses is... THREE.
And it's not merely the number of losses by Top 10 teams. It's to whom. Florida losing to Northern Arizona? Wisconsin losing to Baylor? USC losing to Central Florida and Marquette?
I cannot say with certainly that this is the most upset-laden first three weeks ever in women's college volleyball, but I doubt there have been many seasons like this one.
The lone unbeaten team among those in the AVCA pre-season Top 10 is BYU, who is doing it with defense. Even excluding a season-opening exhibition match in which the Cougars held Utah Valley to an .086 hitting percentage, BYU's opposition hitting percentage is currently an extremely low .177. As shown in the following graph, the Cougars have been allowing some truly microscopic hitting percentages by opponents (BYU played two matches on a trip to Duke).
Another team that has been extremely consistent so far is the University of Michigan. The Wolverines are 9-0 and haven't even given up a game. The competition hasn't been great, but among Michigan's sweeps are ones over respectable teams such as LSU and Colorado State.
Well, as shown in the following chart, the number of Top 10 teams who are still undefeated is... ONE. The number of these teams with three or more losses is... THREE.
| Team | Good Wins Over... | Losses To... |
| 1. Stanford | Penn St., Minnesota |
BYU |
| 2. Nebraska | Oregon (18), Creighton (14) |
Florida |
| 3. Texas | Oregon, Florida, Kentucky |
Wisconsin |
| 4. Minnesota | ? | Oregon, Stanford |
| 5. Kentucky | ? | Creighton, USC, N. Iowa, Texas |
| 6. Penn State | Oregon | Stanford |
| 7. Florida | Nebraska | Texas, USC, N. Arizona |
| 8. BYU | Stanford, USC | --- |
| 9. Wisconsin | Texas | Baylor |
| 10. USC | Kentucky, Creighton, Florida |
C. Florida, BYU, Marquette |
And it's not merely the number of losses by Top 10 teams. It's to whom. Florida losing to Northern Arizona? Wisconsin losing to Baylor? USC losing to Central Florida and Marquette?
I cannot say with certainly that this is the most upset-laden first three weeks ever in women's college volleyball, but I doubt there have been many seasons like this one.
The lone unbeaten team among those in the AVCA pre-season Top 10 is BYU, who is doing it with defense. Even excluding a season-opening exhibition match in which the Cougars held Utah Valley to an .086 hitting percentage, BYU's opposition hitting percentage is currently an extremely low .177. As shown in the following graph, the Cougars have been allowing some truly microscopic hitting percentages by opponents (BYU played two matches on a trip to Duke).
Another team that has been extremely consistent so far is the University of Michigan. The Wolverines are 9-0 and haven't even given up a game. The competition hasn't been great, but among Michigan's sweeps are ones over respectable teams such as LSU and Colorado State.
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