Where Are the Best Zones to Attack To?

• Facebook

• Instagram

• Twitter

• Mail

• YouTube

• WordPress

Prologue

When reading back on my masters dissertation, I referenced a journal article that found out that the line attack was the most effective hitting direction.  This reminded me of a specific Polonia match where we really struggled to defend the line.  So I wanted to find out if this line attack is really the most effective attack direction?  I compiled all the stats just to find out.

Introduction

The Definition of an “Attack”

An attack attempt is an attempt to attack the ball into the opponent’s court in an effort to win a point.  Standing volleys, digs or down balls on the third ball contact are not considered attack attempts.  There are five outcomes from an attack attempts: a kill (point scored including any that comes off the opposition block), an attack zero (play continues on opposition side), attack rebounded (attack blocked but play continues), attack block killed (attack blocked and play does not continue) and attack errors (point lost).  A hitting percentage is a performance indicator to measure the efficiency of the attack.  Its calculation can be seen below.  For more details, click on this link.

Attack Destination Zones

There are ten zones where the attack can end up.  Attack destination zones 1 to 9 refer to the opposition court.  Attack destination zone 10 refers to any kills that comes off the block (block outs, tooled blocks), any attacks block killed and any attacks rebounded.  For any errors that goes out of bounds, I code the nearest zone, e.g. a player hits the line attack from the left side but goes long, the attack destination zone is 1.  For any errors that goes into the net, I code where the ball would have landed if the net was not there, e.g. a player hits the ball cross court from the left side but the angle of the attack is too steep thus the ball goes into the net.  The closest zone would be zone 8.  I do it this way for analysis purposes – although the ball went into the net, you still want to know where the player intended to attack the ball.  For any attacks where the block changes/ deflects its original direction, I still code where the ball would have got.  Again, this is for analysis purposes where I would want to know where the player intended to attack the ball.  The blue arrow indicates the attack origin.  The attack destination zones can be seen below.

Match Data Used

I used match data from the top tier in Women’s English volleyball (Super League and 8s) in the past three seasons (2017 to 2020).  As a reference point, the hitting percentage for the teams in the 2019-20 season ranges from 6% to 27% with the league average being 20%.  The top 3 individual players will hit 40+% (see link for the Top 15).

League Position	Team	SetsStatted	Total Attempts	Kills	Attacks Block Killed	AttackErrors	Hitting %
1st	Polonia SideOut	52	1598	655	89	138	27%
2nd	Durham Palatinates	47	1469	545	91	114	23%
3rd	TeamBU Wessex	37	1051	426	43	102	27%
4th	Tendring (Essex)	37	1041	405	46	99	25%
5th	Malory Eagles UEL	32	1026	343	50	138	15%
6th	London Inter Orcas	36	1159	371	59	128	16%
7th	Nottingham Uni	44	1360	502	96	148	19%
8th	Bristol VC 1	33	810	238	57	90	11%
9th	Cambridge & ARU	32	842	219	57	110	6%
Total	Super League	175	10356	3704	588	1067	20%

Results

I separated the attacks by wing players and middle players.  This because the hitting pct. will be higher for the middle players because they hit in optimal conditions.  To show the hitting pct, I set a minimum of 25 attack attempts to average out the data.

Wing Attacks

Below is the hitting pct. and total attempts for each attack destination zone, separated by attacks from the left side, right side, pipe and ten.

For the left and right side attack, the mid-court attack (zone 8) looks to be effective.  These would be the steep angled power attacks and the low roll shots over the block.  Tipping line (zone 2 for left side and zone 4 for right side) also looks to be effective with the sharp cross (zone 7 for left side and zone 9 for right side), the next effective shot.  The line attack for the left side does not appear to be effective, as originally thought.  However, the line attack for the right side does appear to be the most effective out of all the attack destinations, especially if you are able to hit it steep line (38% hitting).

For back row attack, these are bad options all around.  I wrote about whether it was worth hitting back row attacks (click on this link).

Middle Attacks

Below is the hitting pct. and total attempts for each attack destination zone, separated by middle attack combination.  The middle attack combinations are A/ One, B/ Shoot, C/ Back One and D/ Slide.

Hitting the zone 8 seems again to be the most effective zone to spike to across all middle attack combinations (for C/ back one, it would have 45%).  Also, tipping the ball is also not a good tactic as the effectiveness ranges from 14% to 25%.  The A/ One attack looks to be the most effective with four attack destination zones with a 40+% hitting pct.

Conclusion

I am really surprised that the line attack from the left side is not that highly effective.  It looks like the best zone to hit to in nearly all cases is to zone 8.  This would be the hard steep attack or the low roll shot.  It could be worth to risk to hit this way if you are in a good situation (after a perfect pass or after an opposition free ball or overpass) and/ or you are facing a split block or a 1v1 attacker-blocker situation.  The other thing is if you are going to tip from the left or right side, tip line/ over the block.  Dont’ tip to the zone 3.  Also, don’t tip if you are a middle hitter.  Just blast the ball.

It would be interesting to see what values we get in the men’s game.  Taller players might make that steep attack to zone 8 much more effective.  Or the taller blockers might take that out.