Reception Errors

Reception Errors have been on my mind of late. That’s just the way I roll. The problem is that the only statistic we get on reception errors is from the NCAA statistics database and it covers just the shanks. What I’d love to see is the grade for each player in the service reception. I think only the coaches put that together for their team and it’s not shared. This is where you get a 0, 1, 2 or 3 based on how good the pass was. A zero is a failed pass or an ace by the other team. That is the same thing (I hope) as a reception error so we don’t get the full picture but we can see which teams are really bad (or good) in that aspect. While I pulled that data down, I also got all of the team stats so I figured I might as well look at Points/Set and Hitting Percentage. These are two statistics that I think really do a good job at giving us insight into a team’s offense. Remember that since I’m been tracking Hitting Percentage, the DIII national champion has always been in the Top 11 of that statistics. No other statistic comes close.

Let’s start with some averages through matches as of yesterday. The average Hitting Percentage across all teams is 0.154. Average Points/Set is 14.29 while average Reception Error Percentage is 11.61%.

I guess we should start with the only teams that have a chance at the National Championship this season as of Week 1:

Don’t even get me started on the level of competition these NESCAC teams started off against.

With Points/Set, I am on record saying that 18+ is Elite Level. Anything below that but above 17 is great and is most likely a team that will be in the NCAA Tournament. When a team is in the 16s, they are good and we have seen those teams get an NCAA Tournament at-large but it is rare. (That was also with the old selection system.) Once you get into the 15s or below, we move into the average to no-so-average teams.

Here are the teams that are Elite as of Week 1:

Alright, enough of the stuff that doesn’t matter to me right now. I wanted to look at reception errors and, as stated above, the average is 11.61%.

Looking at the top schools in this statistics, we find Greensboro (2.17%), La Verne (3.31%), Connecticut College (3.64%) and Amherst (3.66%). Everyone else is above 4%. La Verne really jumps out at me because as I watched them, I thought they struggled a bit in the service receive. Maybe that’s the disconnect between the grades and just looking at the shanks. Or, I could have been wrong, which is always highly likely.

Looking at the teams in the 4% range, we find Colby and Whitworth. Colby is the first team in the list that is also above the 18 Points/Set mark. That’s a really good sign for Whitworth as they were a team that lost a lot to graduation but if their receiving is good then the rest should also be good.

In the 5% range we find teams like Hope, Northwestern, Coe, Haverford and St Thomas. Hope is really doing it all early with that 5.1% reception error number and their 19.17 Points/Set number. St Thomas and Haverford accumulated their numbers over at least 15 sets so no fluke, it appears. There were three other teams from New England but it was across only 3 sets.

At the 6% mark, we start seeing a lot of teams. Some teams I have in the Top 25 are CMS, Otterbein, UW-Eau Claire and UW-Oshkosh.

Looking at the backend of this stat and we see some weird stuff. Oswego State is listed with 10 sets played but only 45 reception attempts. I’d love to play a volleyball match where my opponent only gets 4 or 5 serves over. JWU Charolette only has 26 attempts in 6 matches. The first “bad” team that looks like they have real stats is VTSU Lyndon with a reception error percentage of 37.11%. Yikes.

Working my way up the list, the first big named school I see on the wrong side of the average is Babson at 17.44%. Mary Washington is at 16.88% and we can now see one of the reasons they are struggling so far. A surprise team is Emory at 15.75%. That will be an interesting thing to watch for up at Oshkosh as Emory steps up their level of opponents. UC Santa Cruz is at 15.03%, Virginia Wesleyan is at 13.74%, Berry is at 12.50% and Salisbury 12.26%. It’s a two-sided coin with these better teams and these low numbers. They could continue to be bad in reception and you have to figure it will catch up to them or they could improve and they could become even better offensively.

We are only just getting through the first week of the season so all of this is too early to draw conclusions from but still interesting. I will try to update this work as the season goes along and see where your favorite teams falls.