Error #9?: The breakpoint of a set

I think there’s generally a magic number for volleyball in terms of how many errors you can make in a game before you reach a tipping point and send your team to defeat. I know it exists for the program I coached. The question for me then became whether this number holds true across different volleyball levels.

Primarily, I’m looking at unforced errors–the ones where the opponent, generally speaking, did not have to do anything to score the point: service errors, BHE, net violations, attacks hit into the net or out of bounds. One coach I spoke with said he thought it was better to focus on positive-points, that earning them was a better way of looking at things. I’ve decided to disagree…not because earned points are bad, but now we have to judge the opponent’s talent and tactics as well. Was it earned or did the opposing defense make a bad read? –too much judgment for me.

To be clear–this isn’t necessarily stuff to mention to players. I think that depends on your athletes in the moment and their skill level–making players fear mistakes, making them tentative is a bad thing. Another coach I respect for his insane knowledge emphasizes creating scoring opportunities. I think teaching how to create or maximize scoring chances is critical…but I would spin that a bit–reducing unforced errors increases your chances of scoring a point from 0% to anywhere from 0.1% to 99%.

There are some thing here that I have not accounted for–my math/stats ability isn’t good enough, basically these numbers don’t account for strength of opponent. In a lopsided match, it’s possible to have a minimal number of errors because the other team just beat the crap out of you for instance. There’s also no accounting here for really bad unforced errors that don’t show in the stat sheet–a free ball dropping between players, a setter setting high outside while the hitter did a quick-set approach, etc.

For LLCC (314 sets of data, 88 matches)…Win-Loss Record / Win % / Total % of Sets Played

8 or fewer errors: 77-8 / .906 / 27.1 9 errors: 78-17 / .821 / 30.3 10 errors: 31-54 / .365 / 27.1 11 or more errors: 3-46 / .061 / 15.6

This only goes back through 2019 when I tracked it regularly by set. I think that there’s enough of a sample size there that a conclusion can be drawn regarding errors and winning. My team needed to keep that unforced error mark at nine or fewer, otherwise we drastically decrease our chances of winning. I wish I had the data for 2015-2018 when we were a top three program. I suspect the W-L % would remain the same–the one change would be the total sets played in each category. I also wish it because the 2017 team made an outrageous number of errors–but made up for it with an outsize number of aces and kills.

That leads to a different question for me to ponder–>what is the limit of the value of aggressiveness? Because, at a certain point, swinging hard becomes reckless and loses points. How do we track that? Can it be tracked? (I think so…and now I have time to ruminate on it….)

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So what about other levels? What’s that data say?

NCAA D1 (results are match averages rather than per game)…sampling comes from the OVC, Missouri Valley, Horizon, Pac-12 Big 12, and Big 10…

Less than 8 errors/set average: 38-9 / .809 9 errors/set average: 14-21 / .400 10 errors/set average: 1-17 / .056 11 or more errors/set average: 1-17 / .056

Let me grind some NCAA D3 here…, same situation as D1…CCIW, MIAA, NCAC, ARC:

Less than 8 errors/set average: 30-10 / .750 9 errors/set average: 14-19 / .424 10 errors/set average: 3-13 / .188 11 or more errors/set average: 2-8 / .200

(With the D3 stats, there are some schools that do not report BHE *at all*…or else they have brilliant ball-handling…since they have 0 BHE for any of their matches…this means there should likely be results in the 8-9 categories that go up at least one error/set level.)

The one difference with the four-year college stats is that I couldn’t get coaches to give me per-set stats, so those numbers are from match totals and averaged. Instead of sets won/lost…it’s matches for those.

So while the per-set total I have for LLCC shows we want fewer than 9 errors, it looks like over the course of a match, four-year schools want an average of 8 or less. As a check, I’m going to go back and look at three years of LLCC data where I don’t have information per set. These are from the program’s three best years ever.

Less than 8 errors/set average: 70 – 3 9 errors/set average: 26 – 5 10 errors/set average: 12 – 6 11 or more errors/set average: 6 – 10

Again–the break is pretty obvious. The good record with 10 errors–that would be under 50% except for the crazy 2016 team.

So let’s try again with the three ‘worst’ seasons (staying in the same 25-pt scoring era):

Less than 8 errors/set average: 59 – 10 9 errors/set average: 16 – 15 10 errors/set average: 3 – 14 11 or more errors/set average: 3 – 9

The split with these ‘worst’ squads now is closer to the D1/D3 numbers.

I know LLCC played a REALLY WIDE variety of skill levels–that leads to quite a few of the -8 error matches…and some of the wins with 11+ (because I was using bench players and knew errors wouldn’t kill us–I could put starters in at any time).

I don’t have a ton of conclusions from this…just more questions.

1 – What’s the limit to aggressiveness? Where is the line between acceptable/unacceptable unforced errors? 2 – Does this relatively equal set of numbers (keep it below 8-9 errors) carry over to high school? Does it go higher to something like national team competitions or pro ball? 3 – Is there a similar ‘magic’ number that can be applied to men’s volleyball? 4 – Knowing these numbers are pretty clear–can we differentiate still between ‘good’ unforced errors and ‘bad’ ones…or is that something that should be left for practice and development? (For better or worse, the scoreboard has significance/consequences for college coaches) 5 – Can athletes be taught to turn the switch on/off in terms of mistakes?

Thoughts and comments here in the blog’s comment section are welcome.