(VB) Ongoing Volleyball Thread

1. Yes, UF has to be in the top 16 of the selection committee, not necessarily the rankings. Hope UF gets there or the O'Dome goes dark and the Gators travel. The Gators need every win they can get home and away.

2. No, this isn't the worst team in the last 9 years. The ranking likely has to do with the depth of the conference and teams beating up on each other. UF is currently tied for 4th in conference. In the past, tied for 4th didn't get you ranked in the SEC. It becomes an issue when you see all of the good teams from other conferences with better records, possibly strength of schedule/wins against other ranked teams, and conference standings.

Root, root, root for the home team. Oh wait, that's baseball.

 

I saw her attempt to dig a ball slightly to her left and away from the net, and she looked awkward trying to make a play she’d have made last season. It’s been obvious she’s at about 90%….jmho

 

On the out of system dinks, etc….the bottom line is on third contact you want the ball over the net with topspin drop or back row attack with pace but the attacker has to finish the play-without charity to the opponent.

 

An interesting note on a former player playing her final season at SMU-MB N. Okammor. SMU ran a slide which Okammor pounded down the line. The color commentator said” that’s a new wrinkle for Njedi as when at Florida, she wasn’t utilized in the slide”. I’m sorry but the slide is arguably the easiest offensive movement along the net. If you EVER done a layup, you could execute the slide. But to say it was not utilized by her, a MB, as an offensive option is mind boggling imo. Why is my question…btw, for out of system offense, look at L’ville and Anna DeBeer

 

Swimswam,
since you gave me the "c'mon man" rating for saying that CMW should put in someone to serve for K.Martin, here is some statistical information for you to consider:

There are five players who currently have the highest number of service errors (28-29) this season season. Four of them have played almost 70 sets this year, giving them an average of .42 service errors per set. Calculated another way, that's about 6 service errors (each) per 15 sets played.

Kennedy Martin, who was unable to play due to injury at the beginning of the year, has committed her 29 service errors in only 44 sets: for an average of .66 SE's per set. Said another way, that's about 10 service errors per 15 sets played: >50% worse than any of the other four.

Using moneyball, I'd contend it would be smart to have someone else serve for her. In fact, when you consider that these five players (combined) give the opponent 34 points every 15 sets (2 points per set, every set), I'd think the coaches would look hard at using different servers for as many of them as possible, as often as possible.

 

I like Taylor Parks. The end.

 

Agree - Howver, Stuckey is an All American when completely healthy and she ain't there yet.

 

Last year, I actually tried doing something like that. One problem is it's very subjective to define out of system: two options? One option? How do strong back row attacks after a bad pass figure into it?

Another difficulty is results: let's say a serve forces the setter to only one option, but they win the point anyway. Or the setter has three options, but the attack is blocked. Surprisingly to me, easy serves seemed to score, and lose, just about as many points as any others.

Accuracy seems at least as important as velocity, and maybe more so. A moderate serve to a weak receiver may just have a higher chance of success, and less chance of error, than a strong serve to an excellent receiver. And strong serves basically eliminate defending the front half of the court, often allowing teams to hide weaker receivers. Personally, I always found erratic ball flight was tougher to deal with than velocity

Unfortunately, there seem to be no stats kept for number of total serve attempts, much less an average of serve attempts per "serve sequence".

Ultimately, I just settled for looking at the only stat which is objective and 100% controllable by the server: errors. I would think the coaches would select a minimum level of (measurable) acceptability and train the players to that standard, something like: hit the serve with the most velocity that allows XX% accuracy to each service area on the court with desired ball movement. If the player can't achieve that, they don't serve until they develop the ability to do so. (And yes, as a coach, I would be internally counting serves to the wrong area of the court as an error, too.)

 

We may or may not see Stucky regain what she had pre injury. If she doesn’t, we’ll be hearing a lot of what ifs unfortunately. Taylor can execute offensively whatever Mary wants to do these days. Jmo

 

It is interesting that Kennedy Martin is 3rd on the team in service Aces with 0.43 per set, only behind Stucky (0.48) and Erin Engle (0.45) ,who are better. With Parks,, McKissock and Canaan following with 0.36, 0.36 and 0.25, respectfully. So Kennedy does contribute effectively on the serve compared to others. But Aces and errors don’t always tell the whole service effectiveness. Some really good serves end up being kills by an opponent because of good or lucky out of system sets. AC Fitspacrick and Isi Martin have not been as effective errors vs aces, 29 and 28 vs 9 and 16, respectively. These are observations by casually looking at the raw stats which cannot be exclusively used to judge the effectiveness of the service game. A stat that shows opponents out of system receiving service would, but I don’t know how to score that result as a statistic.

 

Our OOS play or bad ball offense es no bueno. Back row attacking is taught around age 12 from my experience. Intermediate top spin roll shots are good but you can’t have a bunch of air underneath the shot. I really don’t know why we don’t see better shot selection on the OOS plays.

 

After a year of mending and rehab, and she's not there yet, will she get there this season? Not picking on her, I love her.
I admittedly haven't seen all the matches, but after watching most of the UT match and some matches from a month ago, Parks has gotten considerably better. And she was pretty good then. Gotta go with whoever is playing the best.

 

There is a system already in place for that serving data....it would be the other teams number of 1, 2, 3 passes and getting aced. I would imagine that with a dedicated person on the iPad that they should be tracking serve effectiveness. What I used to track myself was not only how aggressive the serve was and whether it was in or out, but did they hit the zone I called. I only get to see about half of the calls for any given game and you would be surprised how many of these kids are missing the zone, sometimes by 2 positions! It's also surprising when they miss the called zone and still get an ace out of it and everyone thinks they made such a great serve when in fact it wasn't even what they tried to do!

 

It’s not just the errors but the timeliness of them. Like after a timeout, or when you’re in the 20’s of a set, or when rotations are favorable for us offensively….

 

I so agree about missing the called zone. That's what I was trying to say in my previous post; you said it better.

As to whether UF tracks it. I don't know. But my impression (over the years) is that there aren't any consequences from the coaches for missed zones and service errors.

 

All those extra faces on the bench are tracking all sorts of stuff, believe me. I personally never thought seeing a chart with kills against us was necessary lol…I knew zone 4 or 5 was being exploited and by who.

 

Coaches see different things during a game...i used to ask my assistant to look at certain things and remind me if they happen frequently because I would get tied up watching the block gap or backcourt adjustment and miss something others might see....kind of like watching football, do you follow the ball or watch the line or the receivers? What we all see looks obvious but sometimes I wonder if the staff sees it too and doesn't have a solution or they are unwilling to point out the obvious...i mean come on, the head coach has to know they hit 2 service errors a set right? They have to know they are targeted on 60 percent of serves right? Why do I need to say anything? Maybe that's just way to simple an excuse but geez, lots of people can see the constant issues but the changes don't often get made till the set is almost over.

 

It’s difficult, imo, to miss much on that small surface area of play.