Points/Set Standings (4/1/21)

Hey, look who’s back is feeling better! I was able to go back and pick up all of the matches that I hadn’t brought into my database and we are now good through yesterday!

As a reminder, this article attempts to create a West Region standing based on Points/Set. I also want to highlight matches where a team was out performed in the statistic but still won the match. Quick refresher, Points/Set are the points a team “earns” in a match divided by the sets played. Earned points are kills, service aces and team blocks. Errors by the other team obviously help you win the match but they hurt you in this statistic. The statistic is only presented for DIII matches against DIII opponents. Let’s go ahead and drop the standings of the 29 teams in the West based on Points/Set:

Since this article has been dormant for a bit, let’s focus on where we are now. UTD is still the only “elite” team based on this statistic. Got to get to 18 P/S to be elite and only a few teams nation-wide get there in a normal year so mad props to UTD. Trinity claims the second spot with Colorado College climbing up to the third spot as both teams hit the 17 P/S threshold that usually means an NCAA at-large bid is achievable.

The 16 P/S range is where things get tricky in a normal year when dealing with the NCAA Tournament. What it does say is that these teams are most likely very good probably 20-win teams. We’ve got 5 teams in this range.

The 15 P/S range will consist of good teams but they can all struggle at times and typically wouldn’t have done enough for NCAA Tournament consideration. We have 6 teams in this range. That gives us 14 team (or almost half of the West Region) above this self-created artificial line. Below this line are the teams that typically will be around 0.500 or will be struggling on the year.

With all of that said, this year is not normal and these statistics are being generated against the same opponents each week for the most part as conferences are only playing each other. The individual P/S numbers, therefore, are influenced by the strength of these conferences (or even part of the conference). UTD has an impressive number but I think we can safely derive that the ASC West Division is a bit deeper than the East Division. There is no question in my mind that if we swapped UTD and UMHB, we would see changes to both of their numbers. That doesn’t mean I think UTD’s number is a product of the division as I think they are very good but just an example on how limited opponents impact the validity of this statistic this year.  

Some interesting things, at least to me, with these standings. George Fox in the Top 4 having played three 5-set matches and having a record of 3-3 certainly qualifies as interesting in my mind. 5-set matches put a drag on this number but GFU hasn’t let it slow them down. They certainly have an ability to score points but their ability to win matches is where there seems to be an issue. One thing I don’t talk about is how opponent’s P/S suffer against the better teams. Colorado College has two of probably the best wins in the nation (against Trinity) but have struggled to get to the 17 P/S mark this season. Going through the numbers it becomes obvious that they are just really good at limited their opponent’s P/S when they play. Of the three top teams in the ASC West Division, the current P/S leader is Concordia but all three are within 0.18 P/S from each other. Whitworth dropped a bit at the end of their season due to two 5-set matches against Whitman. Willamette sits at 1-4 on the season but have a respectable 15.00 P/S number. They are the highest P/S team with a losing record in the standings and it’s probably an indication that the NWC Oregon teams outside of Linfield are all pretty solid. Saw a drop in Austin College’s number recently (partly due to playing Colorado College) but they are a 6-4 team with a relatively low P/S.

With all of the matches I entered, we only had one of my records broken. UTD had a +15 P/S advantage when playing Belhaven awhile back in a match. It was the same matchup that held the record previously so I think it’s safe to assume Belhaven is quite done with UTD this year.

I think we had 5 matches where the team with the higher P/S lost but honestly, I can’t where I left off last time. We actually had a double-header where this happened twice. Dallas and Centenary split their matches with the lower P/S team winning each time. We had our first ties in P/S, which seems strange it took this long. The Louisiana College/Belhaven matches had ties in both matches on the same day.

Overall, I think the P/S reflects the quality we are seeing in teams. It was the reason I started tracking this statistic. One thing I wish I had done was track the high and low scores for each team. It’s interesting to me to see what are the limits of a team and how that compares against their opponent.

Tacked Records

Highest P/S differential for a winning team: UT-Dallas +15.00 P/S over Belhaven Highest P/S differential for a losing team: George Fox +3.8 P/S in loss to Pacific Lowest P/S by a winning team: ETBU 10.4 in win over HSU Highest P/S by a losing team: PLU 18.5 in a loss to Puget Sound