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Post by mervinswerved on Apr 9, 2024 15:05:40 GMT -5
I think the positional rigidity inflicted by the rotation and back row rules makes it much harder for volleyball to become "positionless." If your BR attackers can attack like FR players (like in a lot of MBB, you can overcome some of those limitations by overloading certain points of attack. This has its limits, too, because the effective areas of attack in volleyball are so restricted.
If you're being generous, the area of floor where all the (scoring) action happens in volleyball is less than 300 square feet. In reality, the effective area is maybe 100 square feet. There will always be three defenders in that space compared to five defenders occupying 1000+ square feet in an NBA game. There's only so much a volleyball team can do to attack that limited amount of space.
As others have pointed out, the sports with possible positionless play like basketball and soccer (which had that revolution in the 70s) happen over a lot more space in sports which don't limit where a player can do certain actions in the field of play.
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Post by Phaedrus on Apr 9, 2024 15:21:52 GMT -5
Eliminate the libero and reduce the # of subs to 6...absolutely becomes possible. The problem is with so many substitutions available at all levels, players are made to specialize by the time they are 12-13, unfortunately. A change to positionless ball would have to be driven upwards from younger ages, much like the change in football strategic concepts came from HS coaches. vbnerd got into the spirit of exploring the possibilities. Forget the logistical problems of the way clubs and the NCAA operate with the substitution rules or how we would train them. Think about the possibilities of positionless volleyball with both offense and defense. This is a thought experiment.
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Post by oldnewbie on Apr 9, 2024 15:27:32 GMT -5
I can see skill flexibility being important among the skill-based positions: setter and outside hitter come to mind. But in positions where you just have to have a physical presence, like international opposites and middle blockers Whoa. So middle doesn't require skill? Yeah, I'll go ahead and take personal offense to that. That was spoken like a pin that has no clue how to read block.
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Post by oldnewbie on Apr 9, 2024 15:31:22 GMT -5
The problem is that they keep changing the rules to make it more and more specialized. There is basically one optimal way to play under the current rules with the way they have evolved, and personally I find that kind of boring.
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Post by mervinswerved on Apr 9, 2024 15:38:20 GMT -5
There is basically one optimal way to play under the current rules with the way they have evolved, and personally I find that kind of boring. That is a common criticism of modern basketball, especially the NBA. Three pointers and layups/dunks are good, all other shots are far less efficient and should be avoided. Post-ups and mid-range are especially bad unless you have transcendent players (Jokic/Durant, for example) who can score them at such a high rate it makes sense. As long as the court dimensions remain the same and three points is worth more than two, that's the most efficient way to play. To me, though, that's part of what makes the special players truly special. They thrive doing things almost nobody else can. In the case of Jokic (who is the best player on earth and may not be the most fair comparison), he combines his tremendous size and skill inside with world class passing from all three levels. That makes him suicidal to double team and lets him go to work down low in a way other good post players can't.
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Post by c4ndlelight on Apr 9, 2024 15:53:49 GMT -5
Eliminate the libero and reduce the # of subs to 6...absolutely becomes possible. The problem is with so many substitutions available at all levels, players are made to specialize by the time they are 12-13, unfortunately. A change to positionless ball would have to be driven upwards from younger ages, much like the change in football strategic concepts came from HS coaches. vbnerd got into the spirit of exploring the possibilities. Forget the logistical problems of the way clubs and the NCAA operate with the substitution rules or how we would train them. Think about the possibilities of positionless volleyball with both offense and defense. This is a thought experiment. I question the impact of this idea. If you're playing with a libero, you have 4 attackers (5 with an aggressive front row setter) - and it would be about being creative moving the attack from different zones. Switching up who is in which zone (without changing the base offense around) does not mean as much in a sport where there's a net between the two teams (and front row/back row differentials). It's not pressuring defensive switches, etc. Just having a different player set each rotation doesn't real change much defensively - not in the same way shifting the "point guard" to different players//parts of the court is. You're also kind of limited in how you can set this up because it's actually really difficult to consistently get receivers to pass somewhere that's not target (as anyone who's experimented with a mirror offense or libero setting can tell you). Also, the positions are set up to optimize the game - middles play middle because of the blocking skill set - shifting them to a pin or having them hang around in a back row just minimizes that impact. Volleyball at the high levels is already so min-maxed.
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 9, 2024 15:58:48 GMT -5
Every baseball team would like to have 10 Shohei Ohtanis on the roster, but there aren't enough Shohei Ohtanis to make that happen.
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Post by staticb on Apr 9, 2024 16:19:59 GMT -5
You mean the low level rec/intermediate volleyball where everyone just played whatever they happened to be in the rotation could be the next revolutionary offense?!?!?!
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Post by staticb on Apr 9, 2024 16:24:09 GMT -5
Also, the positions are set up to optimize the game - middles play middle because of the blocking skill set - shifting them to a pin or having them hang around in a back row just minimizes that impact. Volleyball at the high levels is already so min-maxed. I wonder if you could come up with something to min-max matchups at the next. Say you had a 5'8 setter against a 6'5 Outside, so you serve-receive patterns and offensive plays where she sets from the left side sometimes? Move things around that way? Yes I know in the college game, they'd likely just bring in a blocking sub--which is already the optimal solution in the college game most of the time. But maybe something professionally....
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Post by c4ndlelight on Apr 9, 2024 16:30:41 GMT -5
Also, the positions are set up to optimize the game - middles play middle because of the blocking skill set - shifting them to a pin or having them hang around in a back row just minimizes that impact. Volleyball at the high levels is already so min-maxed. I wonder if you could come up with something to min-max matchups at the next. Say you had a 5'8 setter against a 6'5 Outside, so you serve-receive patterns and offensive plays where she sets from the left side sometimes? Move things around that way? Yes I know in the college game, they'd likely just bring in a blocking sub--which is already the optimal solution in the college game most of the time. But maybe something professionally.... It would be a stretch to call that "positionless" and is the type of adjustment we do see sometimes - though not that common because it does gunk up transition (and in men's/at higher levels with strong back row attacks then you just end up with your short setter blocking the best attacker on a D ball)
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Post by Not Me on Apr 9, 2024 17:19:44 GMT -5
Wasn’t this called the swing offense way back when?
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Post by Norah Sus on Apr 9, 2024 20:23:05 GMT -5
Whoa. So middle doesn't require skill? Yeah, I'll go ahead and take personal offense to that. That was spoken like a pin that has no clue how to read block. Also, international opposites need to be much more than a physical presence.. they need to be able to put away literally any trash ball at anytime.
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Post by vbnerd on Apr 9, 2024 21:17:12 GMT -5
If you're being generous, the area of floor where all the (scoring) action happens in volleyball is less than 300 square feet. In reality, the effective area is maybe 100 square feet. I'd say 30' of net by 2-4 feet of height depending on the level of play. Wasn’t this called the swing offense way back when? Pretty much. My memory of a full swing is basically "I'm going to take my outsides and let them pass and then go hit where you least want them to." The extrapolation from basketball to volleyball misses a big advantage of why positional flexibility is so important in basketball, which is that in basketball, your "man" (or woman) can be made to guard you no matter where you go. So if you are 6'6" and a 6'1" person is guarding you, you go into the post and there's a huge mismatch. But in volleyball, there's no need to follow your "man" around the court - just because your "positionless" middle blocker plays six rotation doesn't mean their opponent has to as well. Just because you have 3 designated setters doesn't mean your opponent has to as well. The advantage of flexibility in basketball is to get mismatches in a way which isn't possible in volleyball. Essentially every defense in volleyball is a zone defense. Football, you can send your receiver to the zone of the guy least equipped to deal with his size/speed/height/etc. In basketball in man they use picks to force switches to create mismatches, but vs a zone you can match your player up with any defender you want but you have to put your player in that defender's zone. Volleyball is basically the same way and presumably we've all seen mid-level club teams that have one dominant hitter who hits in all zones across the front, and in the back row. The problem is with 1 player the defense knows where to concentrate their efforts. The swing offense Not Me was talking about - if I'm thinking of this correctly - was two such hitters with relatively static middles. Now, in basketball, vs a zone, picks serve to try to create space - defender A gets picked to create space or force player B to stretch or even leave their zone to cover for player A. In volleyball, if you have multiple fully flexible attackers the defense cannot cheat a blocker to your alpha hitter without creating space for another hitter. This isn't new in volleyball, but repositioning hitters to more efficiently exploit your opponents blocking decisions isn't common, to my knowledge. Having multiple setters to create more possibilities for these flexible hitters would certainly be groundbreaking. And to mikegarrison's point, would be like having a left and right handed Ohtani to pitch and play 1st base so you always had a righty pitching vs a righty hitter, and a lefty pitching vs a lefty hitter. It's not easy to create a lineup like this, if only because the players needed to execute it are not everywhere... put Alisha Glass, Kelly Murphy, Kathryn Plummer and Misty May, etc in the same lineup together. All that said, the serving team does have a big say in where/how the offense can attack. If you are using 4 attackers, a setter and a libero, at least two attackers are passing and at least one of them can be pushed deep, or brought in short to possibly create a "pick" for other players. Or if you can serve them out of system it doesn't matter what their offense can do. Also, this is largely to beat the block - 30 feet of net by 2-4 feet of height above it. If the opposing team has strong diggers, they may be able to deal with a hitter being unblocked x% of the time. And last, the team has to resist obvious tendencies - they don't have consecutive rotations in basketball. All of this is to say I'm not saying positionless would automatically work, but just to suggest that theoretically it is possible that it could give an offensive advantage.
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Post by azvb on Apr 9, 2024 23:45:36 GMT -5
Anyone remember the IVA? Men played front row, two women played back row, usually a man (except Mary Jo Peppler)also in the back setting. Now that I think about it, the setter usually came from middle back.not sure why. No rotating, A board at the scorers table showed the next server. Wilt Chamberlain playing OH was…………good to ring in fans.
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