IU volleyball- Another new Setter!

[AntennaMagnet]

I am amazed at how some coaches inordinately think that the setter is the turn key for a teams performance when, in reality, if you have suspect passing and average hitters, there is no setter in the world that is going to make a difference unless she is an attack - savy setter. I am aware of one Div I team that has had 3 different setters over the past three years with the same OHs and MH for the past 3 years and all of the hitting percentages are virtually identical every season, leading me to conclude that setters are a surprisingly minor factor in the team's performance.

[Phaedrus]

antennamagnet said:

I am amazed at how some coaches inordinately think that the setter is the turn key for a teams performance when, in reality, if you have suspect passing and average hitters, there is no setter in the world that is going to make a difference unless she is an attack - savy setter. I am aware of one Div I team that has had 3 different setters over the past three years with the same OHs and MH for the past 3 years and all of the hitting percentages are virtually identical every season, leading me to conclude that setters are a surprisingly minor factor in the team's performance.

1) All three setters are equally effective.
2) These hitters are effective in adjusting to the different setters.
3) Some hitters benefited from one setter while some were hurt in their stats and the average never budged.

So which is it? Team hitting percentage is a cumulative stat which boils team performance down to one measure. You need to look at who your terminators are and what their performance looks like. What is the correlation of individual hitter success with winning percentage. What is the correlation of team hitting percentage with winning percentage? Those are the stats that needs to be examined in addition to the team hitting percentage.

[AntennaMagnet]

I agree that there is more to it. One setter had about 10% more setting opportunities, yet the hitting percentages were no different than any other year. Thus, I interpret this to mean that the back row did a better job of passing the ball, and if so, this did not "improve" the hitting percentage, presumably based on a "settable" pass as opposed to errant bump sets.

[romeo]

A coach has gotta know the personnel. Is it a bad passing team with average hitters? You gotta have a quick and athletic setter who can still mix up the offense off the net. Passing ok, with mediocre hitters? Gotta have a quick thinking setter who makes good decisions and can mix it up. Bad passing with super terminators? Gotta have a quick setter who has nice hands and can throw up hittable balls. Bad passing and bad hitting? You're screwed.

[Phaedrus]

antennamagnet said:

I agree that there is more to it. One setter had about 10% more setting opportunities, yet the hitting percentages were no different than any other year. Thus, I interpret this to mean that the back row did a better job of passing the ball, and if so, this did not "improve" the hitting percentage, presumably based on a "settable" pass as opposed to errant bump sets.

That is way too simplistic. You need to see who is getting the swing and their success rate and then decide on what is going on. You could be right, but you need to look at the underlying causes before making a sweeping statement like you did.

[AntennaMagnet]

Yes, I like the KISS approach...keep it simple stupid. Speaking of stupid, how do you evaluate a high, medium and low quality set ? Is there a "sweet spot" comparable to a strike zone in baseball ? I once heard that Stanfords Kehoe would set dangerously close to the net, and while her hitters preferred it that way, I'm not sure is that would be considered a high or low quality set. On the otherhand, it seems as if in international volleyball, the ball is set outrageously high and there is nothing "quick" about any of it, thus reinforcing my comment that the setter is not such a crucial element as long as the high lobb can be achieved consistently. Collegiate volleyball seems to replicate this with the terminators like Barboza, and I never see the so called "super setters" ever thread the needle with maybe Sammy T. from PSU as one notable exception.

[Phaedrus]

antennamagnet said:

Yes, I like the KISS approach...keep it simple stupid. Speaking of stupid, how do you evaluate a high, medium and low quality set ? Is there a "sweet spot" comparable to a strike zone in baseball ? I once heard that Stanfords Kehoe would set dangerously close to the net, and while her hitters preferred it that way, I'm not sure is that would be considered a high or low quality set. On the otherhand, it seems as if in international volleyball, the ball is set outrageously high and there is nothing "quick" about any of it, thus reinforcing my comment that the setter is not such a crucial element as long as the high lobb can be achieved consistently. Collegiate volleyball seems to replicate this with the terminators like Barboza, and I never see the so called "super setters" ever thread the needle with maybe Sammy T. from PSU as one notable exception.

Ah, so we are approaching this from two different points of view. Your initial assessment is that the setter doesn't matter. Your assertion is that if changing does not change the team hitting percentage then the variations peculiar to changing setters doesn't affect the outcome.

My point is that the team hitting percentage statistic is a normalized measure of the individual hitting effectiveness of all five hitters. That is, you lose information when you present the data as team hitting percentage because it is an average so the data has been smoothed.

Does team hitting averge measure the setter's effectiveness or is it a a measure of the resiliency of the hitters. What you are asserting is that setter variations, which is something that most of us have considered to be critical in an offense, doesn't really affect the outcome, and you are using team hitting average as the measure of outcome. The extrapolation you made was to say that because this group of players played similarly with three different setters, then the conjecture on setter variation is invalid.

BUT, it could also be that this particular group of hitters, who may be well trained, seasoned, and perhaps resilient than others are able to adjust to different setters much better than other groups of hitters. The point is you don't know if it is one or the other. if you used your extrapolation and deemed the setter to not the center of the offense and just having some one who can jack the ball is all you need and the your basis is wrong, that it is actuially a special cause, that this particular data set is unique and is not the norm, then you are screwed.

I will agree with you that the quick offense is more dependent on the setter than a power offense, that if you have a bunch of amazons who are hitting high balls, it really doesn't matter who your setter is.

Team hitting average does not tell you the total swings taken by the team. In your case, you said that one setter got 10% more sets than another, you attributed it to better backrow play. Or it could be that one setter was more active and got to more bad passes than the other setter. if the team hitting average stayed more or less the same, that means that the hitters are in steady state, that they are at the limits of their abilities no matter how many more swings they get, they will consistently put the same amount of balls in, so is this a setter problem or a hitter problem? I would say it is a hitter problem, unless I chart other stats like set quality etc that you suggested, but those statistics aren't reflected in the team hitting percentage.

[izzy]

Regas will be at Savannah College of Art and Design, an NAIA school, this fall. Great kid and she'll do well there. Also a great fit for her major.

[silversurfer]

izzy said:

Regas will be at Savannah College of Art and Design, an NAIA school, this fall. Great kid and she'll do well there. Also a great fit for her major.

Colleges of are and design have athletics? Those must be some killer uniforms, both in function and form.

[vbfan5]

This thread got me thinking about something else. I noticed on the UCSB website, the last two years that Kathy Gregory started talking about her incoming freshmen setters as the favorites to start the next season. So, this year Dana Vargas is coming in and Stephanie Brandt transferred (because of that?). The year before, Stephanie Brandt came in projected as a freshman starter, so Ashley Dutro transferred.
The thing is, no one wants to be the backup setter.

[tsunami]

flora said:

This thread got me thinking about something else. I noticed on the UCSB website, the last two years that Kathy Gregory started talking about her incoming freshmen setters as the favorites to start the next season. So, this year Dana Vargas is coming in and Stephanie Brandt transferred (because of that?). The year before, Stephanie Brandt came in projected as a freshman starter, so Ashley Dutro transferred.
The thing is, no one wants to be the backup setter.

Yeah, I agree. But I think Brandt would have kept her starting position. Vargas is just too raw right now.