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Where is the Most Effective Zone to Place Free Balls?
Introduction
I found that the point scoring effectiveness of the free ball is negative, which means more errors are committed than points are won and that is hurting the team (see link). It would make sense that we should try and work on the effectiveness of every point scoring technical skill and that includes free balls (in addition to attack, serve and block of course). The lower the level of volleyball, the more important free balls become and the more it should (in theory) be practiced.
I can think of two potential ways to improve the point scoring effectiveness of the free ball. The first is the through the technique used (volley, downball, dig) (Update 15 January 2021 – read that post on this link here). The second is the zone you place the free ball. Zone 2 is arguably the best zone to place a free ball. This is because there’s a potential confusion between the setter, who wants to stay at the net and not defend, and the opposite, who should be defending the free ball but may not be in the right position to do so. Zone 1 is arguably the next best choice because there’s a potential space left by the transitioning back row setter that another player may not cover sufficiently. Zone 5 is probably the worst zone to place a free ball because that is where the libero usually defends and the libero is usually the best defender on the team. However, is this true? I looked into the stats to find out.
Statistician’s Notes
Free ball efficiency pct. (FE%) is a performance indicator I created used to measure the effectiveness of the free ball in relation to point scoring. It is the same calculation as a hitting percentage, as follows: . It measures the percentage of free ball attempts that results in a point won (free ball kill) whilst taking into account points lost (free ball error).Any free balls when the player is at full stretch or simply reacting just to keep the ball in play are excluded in the data. This is because the player is simply trying to keep the ball in play and unlikley to be able to place the free ball.The court is split up into 9 zones. Zones 1 to 6 relate to their volleyball position. Zones 7 to 9 covers the mid-section of the court. A diagram can be seen below.
Where is the Most Effective Zone to Place Free Balls To Score Points?
I went back and restatted directions for every single free ball attempt in the dataset (it took a while). Below are diagrams showing the total free ball attempts by zone and the free ball efficiency percentage (FE%) by zone. They are separated by competition.
City University London + Opponents, Women’s BUCS Tier 1, 2017-20
There is a tendency to place free balls deep (zone 1, 6 and 5) or dead centre of the court (zone 8). It is probably because it is the easiest and safest zones to place free balls. It looks like putting the balls short to zone 3 or 8 is the most effective location to place a free ball (+1.5% and +2.2% respectively). It could be the case that the front row middle player is too slow to come back and defend the short free balls and the back row players doesn’t step up to cover all court area. I am surprised that zone 2 wasn’t the most effective zone. Although it is the third most effective zone to place a free ball, the negative FE% means there’s more errors than kills (14 free ball kills, 17 free ball errors, 177 free ball attempts).
Women’s Super League, 2019-20
There is a tendency to place the free balls towards zone 1 and surrounding areas with the left third (zone 5, 7 and 4) avoided. However, zone 1 is actually the second worst zone to place a free ball with a FE% of -4.1%. The best place is surprisingly zone 5 (0.0%), where the libero should be defending. It also looks like a good spot is to place the free ball short middle in zones 3 (FE% -1.0%) and 8 (-0.6%). This reflects the data at BUCS Tier 1 level, even with zone 8 being slightly better than zone 3. Zone 2 again doesn’t look to be that effective as it has a FE% of -1.7%.
Men’s Super League, 2019-20
It looks like there’s a tendency for the men to place the balls either short in front right (zone 2 and 9) or safe to the middle of the court (zone 8). Surprisingly again, the most effective zone to place a free ball is zone 5, where the libero should be defending, with +7.1% free ball effectiveness. This is as a result of 2 free ball kills and 0 free ball errors from only 28 attempts. The middle of the court (zone 8) is yet again, a great place to place free balls with a FE% of 0.0%, which means it has not point scoring effect but it is at least not hurting the teams as with other zones. Yet again, zone 2 is not an effective zone to place the free ball with a FE% of -5.9%.DiscussionPlacing the free ball in zone 8 looks like the most effective zone to place a free ball across all levels. However, with zone 3 also being a good zone to place a free ball (in the women’s game at least), I suspect placing the ball short on the middle of the 3 metre line is the best place to place free balls. At Super League level (men and women), it looks like zone 5 could be the best area to place free balls. I’m not sure why. One possible explanation could be the libero tries to cover too much space in free ball situations so that corner in zone 5 may be difficult to get to. Or it could be that more data, especially in the Men’s Super League, is needed to establish a performance level.I expected zone 2 to be the best zone to place free balls but the stats does not support this idea that much. I suspect it is because it is not practiced enough to be executed properly. I know I haven’t done any training at City University London regarding putting free balls in zone 2 and I doubt the opposition teams has either. At the Women’s Super League, I suspect this is not done either as players tend to put the balls in zone 1. Having rewatch every free ball attempt, I only remember one player (Polonia SideOut London’s libero Guilia Rastelli) who would purposely and consistently put free balls in zone 2.
Limitations
The frequency of free ball kills and errors are so low that the Free Ball Efficiency Pct. is probably a poor performance indicator to use. With hindsight, it would be better to measure the free ball effectiveness by its outcome and have a Free Ball Rating performance indicator, like we do with the serve or pass. I already stat several outcomes – free ball kill, free ball zero, free ball rebounded, free ball block killed and free ball error. However, the important one is to stat whether the free ball zero (where play continues) resulted in a negative free ball dig (out-of-system play etc) or positive free ball dig (in-system play etc). This is where placing the free ball in zone 2 can be viewed as more effective in disrupting the opposition defence rather than how effective it is at scoring points.
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