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Post by joetrinsey on Mar 20, 2019 16:35:16 GMT -5
I wrote a blog post on how to better evaluate blocking from a statistical perspective. Would love to hear thoughts from the coaches on here. www.scoutvb.com/blog-1/2019/3/20/evaluating-blocking-part-1Some of the challenges that make it difficult to stat blocking are the same that make it difficult to coach blocking: 1. The blocker doesn’t have full control. On most sets, the hitter can beat the blocker with the right shot. It’s possible to make a good block and still have the hitter kill the ball. 2. Many attacks never touch the block. At some levels, over half of attacks will touch the block, but at lower levels (such as high school), more than 3/4 of the attacks will go clean past the block. It’s difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of a block when the blocker doesn’t touch the ball. 3. There are lots of non-terminal blocks. At the NCAA women’s collegiate level, only about half of block touches are stuffs or tools/errors. It’s not always clear whether a “block touch” (that doesn’t result in a point for one team or the other) is a positive or negative play. 4. It can be difficult to separate the performance of the player from the system they play in. 5. The standard box score in the USA, the NCAA box score, is mediocre at best at giving you blocking information.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2019 16:58:01 GMT -5
Good one, Joe. For me, there is 'defensive' blocking (a team is REALLY scrambling/ in a bad position; yet they get a "soft touch" in order to regroup) & there is 'offensive' (stuffing/'roofing' it). The way the NCAA calculates B's is WAY TOO obtuse for me. Good blocking involves strategies to outguess the other team's tendencies. Not a KK fan, but he does know techniques!
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Post by psuvbfan10 on Mar 20, 2019 18:09:25 GMT -5
Coleman proposed a 5 point rating system for blocking, I can't recall off the top of my head but it was something like: 5 - stuff block 4 - attempt resulting in a transition kill 3 - attempt resulting in a transition attack 2 - attempt resulting in a free ball 1 - tooled, opponent kill, net violation
Agree that the credit for blocks is bogus in the NCAA! Nice read though and inspires good debate!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2019 18:23:07 GMT -5
Coleman proposed a 5 point rating system for blocking, I can't recall off the top of my head but it was something like: 5 - stuff block 4 - attempt resulting in a transition kill 3 - attempt resulting in a transition attack 2 - attempt resulting in a free ball 1 - tooled, opponent kill, net violation Agree that the credit for blocks is bogus in the NCAA! Nice read though and inspires good debate! Afa a ranking, rating and/or scoring system to quantify blocks: I feel that the outcomes of blocking are SO random-unpredictable; I feel Karch's mode of evaluation is best. Per your referenced article, BAs are pretty much a subjective -- read: meaningless -- invention of the NCAA bigwigs. I fully pay attention to who gets a one-on-one block!
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Post by hochee on Mar 20, 2019 22:10:54 GMT -5
And how do you measure the impact of a "shutdown" blocker, who limits the offense's options and forces it to do things it otherwise wouldn't. And gets less opportunities to block because the offense would rather not test her?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2019 22:34:32 GMT -5
And how do you measure the impact of a "shutdown" blocker, who limits the offense's options and forces it to do things it otherwise wouldn't. And gets less opportunities to block because the offense would rather not test her? At the end of the 1st set in the NC title match at 26-All, L. Sun hit a ball out-of-bounds in attempting to avoid the Stanford block. That was CRUCIAL to SU winning the set. UNL's Foecke and Sweet also Had Critical Misses in later sets. The Cardinal defense had 'gotten into their heads', so to speak: psyching them out. How do you "score" that?
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Post by wonderwarthog79 on Mar 21, 2019 0:58:09 GMT -5
I'm clearly corrupted. I read the thread title as being about blocking on social media sites.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2019 1:05:51 GMT -5
I'm clearly corrupted. I read the thread title as being about blocking on social media sites. I think there is effective psychotherapeutic treatment for your condition, I do believe!
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Post by mikegarrison on Mar 21, 2019 2:13:17 GMT -5
Isn't a big part of the problem that blocking is a team activity, and so evaluating a single player is problematical? It's hard to use the results of the play to evaluate the effectiveness of a single player in a zone defense, and for the most part blocking is basically used as a zone defense in volleyball.
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Post by rblackley on Mar 21, 2019 8:05:04 GMT -5
For me effective blocking doesnt necessarily result in a point for my team. Effective blocking forces the other teams attackers to go outside their norm and disrupts the offense. Another thing good blocking does is position your back court players at locations where the ball HAS to go. Bad blocking leaves your back court players defenseless.
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Post by boh on Mar 21, 2019 9:16:42 GMT -5
Isn't a big part of the problem that blocking is a team activity, and so evaluating a single player is problematical? It's hard to use the results of the play to evaluate the effectiveness of a single player in a zone defense, and for the most part blocking is basically used as a zone defense in volleyball. I agree completely with this. I think to evaluate a blocker you'd need to know what the game plan is defensively. Is the coach wanting the blocker to take away line/cross/just go to the outside out of system and leave the right side one on one? What type of defense is playing behind the block? Are we trying to get the hitter to hit a shot they aren't good at? Funneling the hitter to your best defender? Too many things to consider. If I am watching film of a team I coach I can tell you if the blocker was effective, but don't think there could ever be an accurate stat to show that correctly. To go along with that, I doubt there could ever be anyone outside of the coaching staff that could accurately rate a blockers performance let alone a universally used stat for it that an outsider could use.
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Post by joetrinsey on Mar 21, 2019 9:19:33 GMT -5
I doubt there could ever be anyone outside of the coaching staff that could accurately rate a blockers performance. That feels like a bit of a stretch.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2019 10:01:58 GMT -5
From the article:
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2019 10:15:26 GMT -5
Coleman proposed a 5 point rating system for blocking, I can't recall off the top of my head but it was something like: 5 - stuff block 4 - attempt resulting in a transition kill 3 - attempt resulting in a transition attack 2 - attempt resulting in a free ball 1 - tooled, opponent kill, net violation Agree that the credit for blocks is bogus in the NCAA! Nice read though and inspires good debate! Used to use a version of this to evaluate blocking and direct training. We used "positive block touches" and "negative block touches" similarly to how most modern stats programs use positive/negative receptions. Getting aced (RE) is counted as a negative pass, along with all poor/bad passes, but not all poor/bad passes were errors. Conversely, good passes were further categorized as perfect or simply positive. PBT: touch that resulted in a controlled dig on our side or a stuff block NBT: touch that rebounded back onto the opponent's side of the net or a tool that we could not dig We could then gather more data on situations like transition swings/kills per PBT, stuff blocks per NBT, points scored overall per NBT, etc. Blocking stats then looked like: 9 positive block touches, 2 stuff blocks, 11 negative block touches, 6 tools = 45% PBT (10% points), 55% NBT (30% errors)
I prefer approaches that give percentages vs. a points rating system because I think those are much more intuitive for most people and the goal of stats should be a greater understanding.
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Post by joetrinsey on Mar 21, 2019 10:39:06 GMT -5
I prefer approaches that give percentages vs. a points rating system because I think those are much more intuitive for most people and the goal of stats should be a greater understanding. I agree. It's difficult for a player to visualize what a 2.3 means, whereas "3 good passes out of 5," or "as many stuffs as I get tooled," is usually an easier short-term goal for them to understand.
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