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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2014 16:44:22 GMT -5
www.goldmedalsquared.com/blog/2013/06/to-block-or-not-to-block/I've been reading some of the blog posts on the GM2 website because I was interested to learn more about this particular philosophy (they haven't converted me), because I was always taught to play and teach the game according to the Ping/Butler/Lingenfelter/Kordes/Shondell school of thought: high, controlled reps, breaking skills down into the most basic forms and building up to the game from there, etc. I came across an article about blocking, but specifically this sentence: "At Gold Medal Squared we have always said that blocking is one of the least correlated skills to winning, particularly in women’s volleyball."From everything I've ever seen, read, and heard, that is completely incorrect. I think it's widely known that when Russ Rose was doing his master's thesis on volleyball statistics when he was an assistant at Nebraska when his research concluded that blocking and hitting percentage were the two stats MOST correlated with winning. Considering Penn State's streak in the last decade, I always considered their greatest weapon to be their right-side block. I think that Team USA's block was a huge reason that they were successful in the last quad. I found this interesting that two completely different conclusions could be reached by the two well-educated sides of the discussion.
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Post by kro2488 on Jun 3, 2014 16:58:54 GMT -5
I know Mary Wise agrees with Rose, she's always said championship caliber teams block balls. I agree with this idea. It builds momentum faster than anything, and when you force other teams to hit the ball in ways they don't like or want, or can slow down or constantly stop their better attackers its really really really hard for them to side out leading to larger point runs. How many times did BLOCKING bail out our mens national team in 2008 when other aspects were shaky? Plenty of times. Of course it's always correlated to service pressure and getting teams out of system.
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Post by volleyguy on Jun 3, 2014 17:01:07 GMT -5
Hugh made a presentation of these findings at a conference in Colorado Springs a few years back (2006?). I'm pretty sure there was a thread about it. I remember listening to him and thinking he was off-base. Besides the obvious correlation that if you block more, you score more, the problem as I see it is that you can't correlate what you can't measure directly: disruptions and adjustments the hitter or setter makes to avoid the block, etc.
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Post by jasonr on Jun 3, 2014 17:17:35 GMT -5
How were the stats defined? I doubt actual blocks are strongly correlated with winning percentage, but I'd venture a guess and say that "a strong block," i.e. a team that can disrupt swings with how quickly they can move and penetrate over the net and get touches on attacks is strongly correlated with winning percentage.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jun 3, 2014 17:26:31 GMT -5
You have to be careful with this stuff. For instance, I am sure that blocking is pretty strongly correlated with the number of attacks the opponent has. The opponent could have a lot of attacks for several reasons. One might be because you keep serving because you keep scoring points. But another might be because you can't terminate, so they keep bring your attacks back as attacks from them.
In order to understand correlations, you also have to understand causal flow and figure out when the correlation you are seeing is really more strongly coupled with some other correlation that actually is the one that is meaningful in the situation.
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Post by jasonr on Jun 3, 2014 18:06:22 GMT -5
You have to be careful with this stuff. For instance, I am sure that blocking is pretty strongly correlated with the number of attacks the opponent has. The opponent could have a lot of attacks for several reasons. One might be because you keep serving because you keep scoring points. But another might be because you can't terminate, so they keep bring your attacks back as attacks from them. In order to understand correlations, you also have to understand causal flow and figure out when the correlation you are seeing is really more strongly coupled with some other correlation that actually is the one that is meaningful in the situation. This is a strong confound over one match, or short series of matches, but I'd guess that it irons out over time. We'd need to see those breakdowns of course, but my guess is that it's not much of a confound over many matches. |
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Post by redbeard2008 on Jun 3, 2014 18:21:30 GMT -5
Depends on what you mean by "blocking" - if the object is to block the ball to the opponent's floor, then, no, there isn't a correlation between winning and how many balls you block. However, if the object of a blocking scheme is to force an opposing player to undertake riskier attacks, with blocking balls to the floor being, at best, a bonus...
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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2014 18:31:34 GMT -5
Depends on what you mean by "blocking" - if the object is to block the ball to the opponent's floor, then, no, there isn't a correlation between winning and how many balls you block. What? Why? Prove it. That's what I'm asking for - proof, because all data, results, and examples that I've seen show that teams that block well tend to win. There is a strong positive linear relationship between those two variables according to everything I know. |
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Post by redbeard2008 on Jun 3, 2014 18:55:12 GMT -5
Depends on what you mean by "blocking" - if the object is to block the ball to the opponent's floor, then, no, there isn't a correlation between winning and how many balls you block. What? Why? Prove it. That's what I'm asking for - proof, because all data, results, and examples that I've seen show that teams that block well tend to win. There is a strong positive linear relationship between those two variables according to everything I know. Oregon played for the national championship, with very mediocre blocking statistics. Their digging and floor defense was exceptional, however. Like I said, it depends on what you mean by "blocking". The emphasis on bunch-read/swing blocking would seem to indicate that blocking figures very heavily into GM2's thinking, but as part of an integrated defensive scheme, rather than merely as a stand-alone statistic. |
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Post by kokyu on Jun 3, 2014 18:56:33 GMT -5
Good to know blocking's the last consideration on the skill chart for Karch selecting his players. Leads me to wonder why Mann hasn't been considered to train in Anaheim as middle attacker.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2014 19:10:36 GMT -5
Blocking as an individual stat may not correlate, but it affects your opponents hitting percentage negatively and that may be more significant. Plus as already noted, your team will have less swings but would likely increase the quality of those swings which would increase your teams hitting pct
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Post by kro2488 on Jun 3, 2014 19:22:25 GMT -5
Good to know blocking's the last consideration on the skill chart for Karch selecting his players. Leads me to wonder why Mann hasn't been considered to train in Anaheim as middle attacker. If we could get the ball to her in transition enough it could work...maybe.. but i don't see that happening. Even though I'm a Florida fan unless her blocking gets a tiny bit better. |
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Post by n00b on Jun 3, 2014 19:28:14 GMT -5
The problem with proving these types of things (one way or the other) is that volleyball is such flowing team sport. Moneyball works great for baseball because each pitch is its own discrete situation. For volleyball, that's not the case. If you look at the B1G and Pac-12 blocking stats from 2013, you can see that they almost exactly mirror the league's standings (Oregon is an outlier). However, I don't know if that means a whole lot because hitting percentage and opponent hitting percentage also pretty much mirror the standings. The best athletes are the best attackers AND the best blockers (usually), so it's incredibly difficult to isolate one skill. I'd be curious to see what GM2's method was. |
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Post by kokyu on Jun 3, 2014 19:31:31 GMT -5
Good to know blocking's the last consideration on the skill chart for Karch selecting his players. Leads me to wonder why Mann hasn't been considered to train in Anaheim as middle attacker. If we could get the ball to her in transition enough it could work...maybe.. but i don't see that happening. Even though I'm a Florida fan unless her blocking gets a tiny bit better. Passing will be sufficient with Tom, Larson, and Banwarth. Not that Plum and Kreklow wouldn't set Mann on mediocre passes either. |
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Post by mclvbdad on Jun 3, 2014 20:38:54 GMT -5
I haven't done much research but looking at stats I seem to see a correlation between lack of blocking and fewer digs. This seems to make sense to me, that a weak block would result in the opponent getting more quality attacks therefore leading to fewer digs.
I just don't like attempts to correlate outcome to a single factor. The game is more complicated than that. If you do find those direct correlations to a single factor I would be interested in seeing if they were for an individual team. I would bet that the correlations change as personnel change.
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