Monday, July 4, 2011

Analyzing Volleyball Statistics

By Rob Chrin


To coach volleyball effectively you need to get information from volleyball statistics. And as most coaches know, the information you gather is not enough to give you the full story. It's just when you start massaging the information, manipulating it, researching it in different ways that you get info. And that info permits volleyball coaches like you to make choices or at least get a understanding of what's been going on with your team and/or individual players.

In the volleyball world, it's not difficult to get volleyball statistics by either collecting them manually or employing a program like iVolleyStats. Nonetheless, at the end of the match, all you have is some extraordinarily basic info and from that, you would like to make a determination of something. Plenty of times, you do not need statistical data to tell you what you already know. That is, if you actually know a player is struggling, you do not need a lot of data and/or info gathered from analysis to tell you that fact. For those players, that information is apparent, you know. But let's say you have 2 outside hitters that are really close. Often it is not always simple to tell different things about them. Yeah, OK, you know that these 2 are your big guns, but there are apparent volleyball statistics, for example each of their hitting percentages, and from that you can get a much better view on which player is basically better in their hitting. You can also look at trends, to see if there is upward, downward motion relative to a goal or the team itself, and then make a determination if they're above or below the team and/or their goal, which is one of the things which the VBAnalyzer programme does.

But more information might be possible using out-of-the-box thinking from the basic box score data. For example, if you're using 2 setters, what's the set distribution? Do your hitters hit better with one setter versus another setter? What about, if the pass was a perfect pass, then do they have a better hit than a non-perfect pass? So there are specific connection points that using the play-by-play file from iVolleyStats you can get that kind of info if you put a short period of time into the research. So what's great about info and computers is that you can take the information and analyze it in many possible ways.

Sadly, if you were manually processing the volleyball statistics you would not be in a position to effectively manage that type of thing. Meaning to say, it's very hard to track the play-by-play side of what just occurred in a set. That is, you're not going to be in a position to get the exact play by play actions that resulted to understand who made the pass (and what was the rating), who did the set (and where did they set to), and who made the hit (and what was the result, zero attack, error or kill). But as I just claimed, that info is available from iVolleyStats and then it is simply a matter of taking that info and analyzing it.

So VBAnalyzer has committed to look at these types of things so that it can provide that type of analysis to make coaching volleyball simpler. When desktop PCs initially came out, many people were threatened by PCs, particularly low office workers, like receptionists and those kinds of roles. They felt that computers were going to take their jobs. And to some degree, PCs do take jobs, but in general, computers are a tool to help assist you to make things faster, easier, and quicker. And that's the goal I have with VBAnalyzer. It is a tool to make one part of null quicker, easier and faster. And there's no one-size-fits-all, black-and-white situation. For every situation, each team, every group of players, there's going to be a different dynamic. And it might be different at the beginning as it is at the end of the season. So it's a really fluid, dynamic process that is moving all of the time and it can truly contribute in how things finish up.

So I would like to take that analysis and constantly keep a record of what now is going on and get that information out in the most highly efficient way so that as a volleyball coach you do not have to make the effort and sit right down and have to plan these things out. What I visualize is that it will enable you to look at different trends and analyze what the meaning of that trend is. And I need VBAnalyzer to be a tool which will easily create these relations and trends and other stuff too , with little to no effort on your side. So as a volleyball coach you might say, oh, I see xyz so that obviously means this and this is what I should do. In that sort of situation or how I should counteract this or adjust to this to improve things and put my team in a much better position to win.




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