Player Usage at the Four-Year College Level

So I had some data sitting around–stuff from NCAA D1 VB, dated from about 2002-2007.  Since that point, sports, especially baseball, have started looking into things like the overuse of pitchers, pitch counts, the works.  I mean, fair enough, since they’ve got big bucks tied up in a player’s performance–you want them healthy.

The thing is–I get a ton of inspiration for my volleyball thoughts from the work done with baseball stats, so it is only logical to apply this to thoughts on the otherawesome sport, right?  I took players by position and crunched some numbers–by hand…so it is possible I mis-carried a number along the way or typed a formula into Excel wrong.  I don’t think I did–I tried to be careful, but caveat emptor.  I just don’t have the resources like pro coaches.

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What I have for each position is a number of categories.  Most are understood by VB coaches, so I won’t define them.  GP is games played (now changed to ‘sets’ until they change the term back again…).  Pass Err refers to serve-reception errors ‘credited’ to the player.

Two of them will seem odd.  The first is ‘age’.  This is how many years they’ve been in college on average–so that with setters, you’ll see 1.13 for the ‘age’ in year 1.  This means there are kids who were redshirted/didn’t use an initial year of eligibility.  The other is the ‘points’ category.  What I tried to do using blunt force with an Excel formula was figure out how to determine a ‘true’ value of assists, digs, etc, in scoring points–rather than just counting kills/blocks/aces.  In scoring a point, it is not all about the kill–those first two contacts are important contributors.

All of this is meant to determine usage and effectiveness.  Does it help or hurt a team to start a freshman?  Does the experience of a senior actually matter on the court?

SETTERS (includes setters who hit when in front row): Playing time skyrockets after the first year.  Clearly many teams prefer the setter to learn the system before running things on the court.  They get a lot of playing time in Year 2 and by Year 3 they are running the show.  I’d guess that second year sees a lot of time as a DS or running things from the back row.  In terms of value to the team, there’s a clear improvement each season.  

I think this is like football quarterbacks–the more you play, the more the game slows down in terms of decision-making.  Setters have to do everything and it takes time to learn how to perform all skills *AND* implement a scouting report/know your own team well enough to be a great setter.

OUTSIDES (including RS who did not set):  What shocks me looking at this is the average number of games played and the drop between soph/junior seasons.  It’s a 30% drop30% drop.  It recovers for senior year, but still not to the sophomore level.  What’s interesting is hitting efficiency increases each season.  Is this overuse?  Before a junior season begins, that athlete will have done multiple long club seasons then two full college seasons (including massive use as a sophomore).  Coaches get the talent and put it out on the court right away (soph year), but would there be value in reducing some of that playing time?  Given that the hitters score more ‘points’/game in Years 3+4, that could mean a significant payoff in player value to the team.  

Also interesting, a sophomore OH is worth more than a soph setter, but not after that point.  Given what looks like injury issues, perhaps it is best to pair younger hitters with that senior setter?

MIDDLES  And here we’ve got a similar thing with the outside hitters–a reduction in playing time between soph/junior seasons that recovers for the final year.  This pattern is only for the hitting positions–not the setters or back row players.  What fascinates me in terms of these numbers is that the ‘points’/game for a MH increase at a consistent rate.  There is no sudden pop from crap to stardom–just consistent improvement.  One other thing–middles lose efficiency during that injury season–hitting drops .033; outside hitters didn’t suffer that even as their playing time decreased (presuming injuries…)

BACK ROW  Playing time increases each year though it looks like that it is more ‘full-time’ for players in Year 3 or 4.  Value climbs with those last two years as well.  I mentioned setters needing to learn how to run an offense as a rationale for being far better as seniors than freshmen.  Perhaps that is true, too, for the back row?–that athletes need time to gel with teammates, become assertive, and get good at reading opposing hitters as well as being able to incorporate scouting reports ‘in real time’.

So there you go.  I’d love to have something like baseball-reference.com or retrosheet.org where you can sort stats properly–something that you can’t do with NCAA information.  I don’t even know what conclusions can be drawn from everything above.  This isn’t the largest sample size–55 team-seasons of info.  Can you/should you go back and check your own program for patterns like this. 

Would it help to know your OH and setter are most likely to make a huge leap after the first year, but that you’ll really need to watch the hitter for potential injuries and problems?  Perhaps the information changes how you train–do you give extra days off even though you have a compulsion to practice?  That’s up to you.  If you have numbers like this though, it’s always good to share.  –Be like men’s VB coaches…share what you’ve got!  That’s the way we make the sport better, raise coaching skill everywhere!

Grow. The. Game.