Points/Set – Final Four Teams

Way back in July of this year when there were still a number of conferences planning on actually playing volleyball this fall, I wrote a couple of articles about Points per Set (P/S). (That link will get you to the second article, which has a link to the first.) I made a comment at the end that said I wanted to look more into this statistic but obviously the DIII volleyball world ended a few days later. As I’ve been going through my Championship History articles, my mind kept wandering back to P/S. So, I’m taking a break in my other research to bring you this brief palate cleanser.

Today I wanted to look at the Final Four teams from the last 5-years with an eye towards their P/S statistic. In my original research, I determined that 16 P/S or higher was really needed to be considered an NCAA Tournament team. Dang, let’s back up a second. Points per Set are the number of points (kills + aces + solo blocks + (block assists/2)) a team scores in a single set. We all know teams have to get to 25 points but rarely does a team score all 25. The other points come from opponent errors like service faults, ball handling errors and hitting errors. Hope that makes sense. The blocks assists are kind of strange but remember that typically means two players were credited with a block assist on the same play or else there was no assist. So, the end result is that two block assists equal one point.

So, 16 is the goal. If you can get 17 P/S or higher then you are almost guaranteed to make the tournament. (Let’s all take a moment and raise a glass to the 2019 MIT squad with their 17.17 P/S number as the only team with 17 P/S or higher not to make it.) The statistics show that 18 P/S or higher puts a team in an elite status. For instance, in 2019 only 3 teams reached this number (Calvin, Colorado College and Johns Hopkins). Safe to say those were elite teams in 2019.

Back to the Final Four teams. Let’s start in 2015 where we had only two teams reach the 18 P/S mark in UT-Dallas (18.06) and Washington-St. Louis (18.02). That was an incredible selection year because the NCAA decided to really hose the West Region by snubbing teams in that region and then take one of the best teams in Washington-St. Louis out of the Central and send them out west! To rephrase this, by virtue of P/S, the two best teams in the nation were placed in a region as the top 2 seeds but neither got to host! Ah, good times you wacky NCAA DIII Selection Committee. Good times. The host team was Cal Lutheran who ended up beating both teams on their way to a national championship. Honestly, one of the more impressive NCAA Tournament runs a team has ever had. The Final Four teams ended up being Cal Lutheran (17.65 P/S), Wittenberg (17.01), Carthage (17.07) and Hendrix (16.47). Hendrix was the surprise team that year after beating Berry, Emory and then Bethel in 5-sets before losing in 4 to Wittenberg. Still, impressive numbers from all 4 teams. There were 12 teams that year that had a P/S in the 17-point range (or 14 teams with 17 P/S or higher when you include UTD and WUSTL).

2016 was a special year for me as that is when my daughter and Southwestern made their Final Four run. It was also the last year when the NCAA ranked the regionals and allowed that rank to determine the Elite 8 bracket play. The Final Four teams were led by National Champion Calvin (18.14 P/S) followed by Washington-St. Louis (16.76), Northwestern-St. Paul (17.68) and Southwestern (16.23). Again, all good numbers but I will throw out a spoiler and let you know that Southwestern’s P/S number was the lowest of the 20-teams we’ll be looking at. It was an interesting year for my Pirates, as they were actually significantly better (P/S wise) in both the previous and following year. In 2016, there were three teams that reached the 18 P/S mark in JWU (18.47), UT-Dallas (18.24) and Calvin (18.14). That Johnson & Wales number is the highest P/S number I found in the 5-years of my data but they would get swept out of the tournament in the first round. There were 16 teams in the 17 P/S range led by CMS at 17.90. Now you know that no Final Four team will have a lower P/S number than 16.23 and I’ll go further by reveling that 14 of the 20 teams had a 17 P/S or higher.

To get sidetracked a bit here since we’re talking about the 2016 year because when I saw the UT-Dallas and CMS numbers, I wondered what that UT-Dallas (West) Regional consisted of that year. If you remember, the NCAA drove Hendrix into the regional and allowed Cal Lutheran to fly out to Northwestern where they lost in the Regional Final. The UT-Dallas Regional had 5 teams with 17 or higher Points/Set. The #8 seed Whitworth had the lowest number at 15.98 with Southwestern being the next lowest at 16.23. It simply was a remarkable Southwestern team that had the regional of their lives that weekend and it was so special to watch.

In 2017 we had the CMS championship and that was the only year out of the five we are looking at where the winner didn’t have the highest P/S number out of the 4-teams. These four were CMS (17.44 P/S), Wittenberg (16.83), Ithaca (16.73) and Calvin (17.59). That year there were no teams that reached the 18 P/S mark for the year. There were 15 teams in the 17 P/S range led by Otterbein at 17.96 who would get swept in the second round to Ohio Northern.

In 2018 we had Emory winning the nation championship and this was the only year of the five where every Final Four team had a 17 P/S number or higher. The teams were Emory (17.94 P/S), Calvin (17.40), Juniata (17.29) and UW-Eau Claire (17.45). Again, there were no teams that finished in the 18 P/S range but we did have seventeen teams in the 17 P/S range. The leader was actually Emory so this is the first year where the Points/Set leader won the national title.

Last year we had the remarkable Johns Hopkins undefeated run that surprised many (including myself) but maybe we should have been looking at their P/S. Colorado College led the nation in P/S at 18.25 followed by Johns Hopkins at 18.23 and then Calvin at 18.22. There were seventeen teams that would reach the 17 P/S range so last season was the most offensive year of the five. (Only to be surpassed by 2020, which is now the most offensive year ever. Yeah, English can be fun.) As for the Final Four, we had JHU (18.23 P/S), Emory (16.94), Trinity (17.56) and Carthage (17.23).

I’m really starting to love this statistic! Firepower in the DIII game is important and this gives us a pretty clear-cut number to gauge teams. I feared originally that good teams in weaker regions might benefit in this statistic but you have to be playing teams that won’t be giving you points or else your P/S will lower. Maybe some of that did contribute to the 2016 Johnson & Wales record number but their 18.47 P/S was 0.22 points higher than second place (2019 Colorado College at 18.25). Pretty darn impressive. I also want to throw some love to UT-Dallas who have had some amazing P/S numbers these last 5-years. Their lowest number was in 2017 and it was 16.82 P/S. Two years they were above 17 and two years they were above 18! I don’t think they are thought of as the national power they truly are. My 5-minute search of the data showed only Calvin and Colorado College with better numbers over those same 5-years.

I doubt the NCAA will ever make radical changes to their selection criteria and then to include a pure statistic like Points/Set would be out of character to the Nth degree but this 5-year study does seem to shine a light on the better teams in the division. I may need to track this whenever we start playing again and maybe even factoring it in to my own poll.