Errors Revisited

The tools provided by WordPress for this website are limited. I mean, it’s free, so no complaining. One thing that would be interesting to know is how many new viewers I get to the site. I can tell when someone subscribes but not someone who happens to find the site and not subscribe. Well, over the years, I’ve discovered I can figure it out by looking at the views of different articles. It’s normal to have views for recent articles, but when I start getting views for older articles then I know I’ve either found a new viewer or someone is getting board waiting on those WENUS Reports. Yesterday, I had a new viewer that happened to stumble across an article I did on Errors/Set back in 2020. I didn’t remember it so I re-read it (hey, a second new viewer showed up). It details number of Errors/Set teams make and whether a lower number equates to making the NCAA Tournament. I thought it would be interesting to revisit this topic now that we have 3 additional years of data.

The first problem I had initially was trying to find a statistics page that contained errors all in one place. Luckily, the NCAA Statistics page has a “Trends” Tab that has all of the statistics for a conference and an institution. The second problem is defining errors. I went with summing attack errors, service errors, receiving errors and ball handling errors. (For those new to the sport, ball handling errors was something that was called in the past when a player double contacted the ball with the ball staying on their side of the court. I know, the sport was really strange back in the day. Wait until I tell you about the time middles got to play defense and you could only score a point when serving.) I excluded blocking errors because statistically, these are also considered kills by the opposing player. So, staying positive and not bringing more negativity into this discussion. (I promise to stay positive until I see the AVCA rankings.)

Let’s start off like I did in the previous article by listing the national averages for Points/Set, Errors/Set and the Difference. Here are the averages for the last 6-years played and our average through the weekend:

I really haven’t done any Points/Set articles like I did in the day, but NCAA Tournament at-large teams typically are 17+ Points/Set. Elite teams are 18 Points/Set or higher. We’ve never really focused on Errors/Set but the 2019 champions, Johns Hopkins, averaged 7.24 E/S and that was 6^th best that year. As a side note, in my weekly rankings, I do include Points/Set for each team when the program presents it in their statistics page. (Looking at you UW-Platteville in case you are wondering why I don’t list it for your team.)

One thing we found, and it continues, is that there is less variance in Errors/Set than Points/Set. The 2019 Johns Hopkins team averaged 18.24 Points/Set, which gave them an impressive difference of 11. So, that’s around 4.5 Points/Set higher than the average that year while only 2.3 Errors/Set lower.

Looking at those national averages, I’m not sure we can make many conclusions. The 2019 season seems to have been a year of less offense but more efficient (less errors) play. The rest of the years are about the same but we can probably say that there is an uptick in offense with a slight uptick in errors. I expected the Errors/Set number for our current season to be a little lower due to the ball handling changes. It actually may explain some of the increase in Points/Set due to extended rallies.

Focusing on our current season, here are the top 10 teams in lowest Errors/Set:

Holy cow! Look at that Washington & Lee number! It’s hard to beat a team that won’t beat itself at times.

Here are the Points/Set leaders for this season:

Remember that 18+ Points/Set is elite but I don’t remember this many teams being at that level before in a single season. Cortland is a surprise but the others are expected. (Don’t get me wrong, Cortland is good…just didn’t think they were scoring at that level.) What did you notice between those two lists? For me, it’s that our two best teams (arguably) are on the Points/Set list but not the Errors/Set list. Offense wins and I don’t see that changing.

Here are the top teams in difference between P/S and E/S:

With Whitewater being on both lists, it’s not a surprise they are our leaders. We now see Juniata and MIT and really the only two schools that may be a surprise are Ohio Northern and Cortland (again). Although I will say that all 10 teams are above the NPI cut line for an at-large bid. (Same is true for the top 10 Points/Set teams but not true for the Errors/Set teams.)

I always talk about how the Top 11 in Hitting Percentage gives us the tell as to who will win our national championship. You might think Points/Errors Difference might also clue us in. Well, for the last 6 championships (as far back as the data allows) we have:

2017 CMS 5^th in Difference 2018 Emory 9^th 2019 Johns Hopkins 1^st 2021 UW-Eau Claire 22^nd 2022 Juniata 3^rd 2023 Juniata 1^st

So, yes, I think we can say it’s important but we have to acknowledge whatever the heck UW-Eau Claire was smoking in ’21. In defense of UWEC, they played an extremely tough schedule that year, which is going to impact these numbers. Side note, did you know that UWEC was the last team to beat Juniata in the NCAA Tournament? Regardless, we can’t say anything cool like the Top 10 teams in Points/Errors Difference will always win the championship. Thanks Eau Claire! I will say looking at the past three Elite 8 teams 13 of them where in the Top 10 (out of 24). Last year, when we really had 8 competitive regionals, it resulted in 6 of the 8 teams being in the Top 10. (UW-Oshkosh was 12^th and Johns Hopkins was 15^th.)

Finishing up, I’ll make a point I made in the original article; if you are an average Point/Set team, you only need to improve by 3 Points/Set to get into that 17+ range. In some cases, that’s like replacing one below average pin hitter with an elite pin hitter. It’s not really that easy but in a time where we have a number of powerhouse programs that don’t seem to ever lose, there is a path for the average DIII volleyball team to be great.

I thought I was finished but here are some tidbits from the last three years:

• 2021 CMS led in Difference at 11.40.

• One of the best Regional Finals I ever saw (streamed) was CMS/Wartburg. Wartburg was third that year in Difference.

• 2021 Mary Hardin-Baylor had the lowest Errors/Set at 6.23.

• 2022 CMS led in Difference at 11.51 (highest number I recorded over the six-years).

• 2022 Mary Hardin-Baylor had the lowest Errors/Set at 6.88.

• 2023 Junita led in Difference at 11.15.

• Juniata also had a 19.15 Points/Set number, which is the highest I’ve recorded.

• 2023 Wesleyan had the lowest Errors/Set at 6.38.