Errors Revisited

I’ve mentioned before that I like when I get a new reader because they often go through old articles and I can see what they’ve opened in my web site’s statistical page. Most days, without new readers, I see posts from only that day or maybe one or two from previous days. With a new reader, I see posts pop up from years ago that I’ve forgotten about. This past Sunday, I must have had a new reader because a ton of old posts were listed. One that I had forgotten about was called Let’s Talk about Errors.

This article was about a tab I discovered in the NCAA Statistical Database that listed errors. This allowed me to compute the number of errors a team gives up per set. I found that, although Points/Set were significant among the top teams in the nation, Errors/Set were not. As a refresher, Points/Set is the number that a team on average earns. Errors/Set is the number of points on average a team gives to their opponent. In this article, I then took the difference for each team between Points/Set and Errors/Set and found that in 2019 the Top 10 teams all made the NCAA Tournament and four of them made the Elite 8. I thought it would be cool to update my spreadsheet to include 2021 and to see how 2022 is going.

In 2021, things weren’t as clear cut as previous years. Here are the Top 10 in difference:

The last three teams in this list didn’t make the NCAA Tournament although three did make the Elite 8. What this statistic doesn’t take into account is Strength of Schedule (SOS). If you play an easy schedule then you can certainly do well in these statistics. UCSC had an SOS of 0.549, Denison 0.594 and UMHB 0.483. So, we can see why UCSC and UMHB didn’t make it in but you may be wondering about Denison. Well, most of us thought there were making it in as an at-large but it didn’t happen. If you are interested in more Denison 2021 discussion, you can find it here.

Here were the Top 10 in Points/Set:

Yeah. Denison again, but the rest made the NCAA Tournament. The Top 4 all made the Elite 8.

Here were the Top 10 in Errors/Set (least given up):

The Top 2 didn’t make the tournament but the rest did. Some as automatic qualifiers from their conference. You can see the teams here are not of the same quality as the other two lists although there is some crossover. Only two from this list made the Elite 8. Bottom line, Errors/Set isn’t as indictive of a top team. You can reduce errors all you want but you need to be able to impose your offensive will on your opponent.

I’m not sure what you can take away from these three lists other than CMS was really a great team that had the misfortunate of playing another great team when they were better.

For those wondering, the champions UW-Eau Claire were 22^nd in Difference. They had a good 17.01 P/S and 8.09 E/S. UW-Eau Claire was not the best team during the season, but they sure were the last two weekends.

If you are wondering how we are doing this year, here are the best differences:

Some really good teams here. All are in my Top 25 except for Stevenson.

Here are the Top 10 teams in Points/Set:

William Peace is the outlier here. Fine team, but not when they play a quality program. History says that four of these teams are going to make the Elite 8 and I certainly wouldn’t bet against it.