READER T.R. writes: Nice job JT! Gopher Volleyball is the best show in town – And no coverage of the in Mpls or St. Paul papers!
READER G.U. writes: My wife hadn’t watched more than a few minutes of volleyball in her life before watching Friday’s match, but she wants me to buy BTN+ so we can watch every week.
JOHN: So buy it for her for Valentines Day, you cheapskate.
READER P.H. writes: I sent the link for GopherVBallRocks to my sister in Ely and she loves it!
JOHN: Good for you and good for her. If Sister in Ely wants to send me her email address, I can add her to the emailblast so that she’ll receive notification of new posts.
READER B.W writes: Really shocked at the number of aces served by Purdue on Friday. Seemed like the Gophers’ serve receive got stronger after they switched Kilkelly to libero.
JOHN: Interesting observation. I still don’t know anything about McGraw’s absence from the line-up, which began mid-match on Friday. I had assumed that she had injured herself on the last point of the third set, but you’re making me wonder if maybe McGraw wasn’t 100% before that. I wasn’t sold on Kilkelly her first few matches as a freshman last year, but as the season went on I liked her game more and more. I agree that she played well as libero for the last two sets Friday and the entire match on Saturday. And I almost didn’t notice Wenaas as D.S. – which probably means she was doing the job right.
READER P.H. asks: You write about Myers having a .257 kill rate, Pittman having a .347, and the team hitting .650 in the 5th set on Saturday. What do these percentages mean?
JOHN: In our data-driven world, it has become popular to measure the effectiveness with which a team or player attacks the ball, using the following formula:
              Hitting Rate = # of Kills* – # of errors**
                                             # of hitting attempts
[* “Kills” are defined as balls the other team cannot return, e.g., a ball that hits the floor without being touched, including a dink, and balls that are smashed off an opposing player and out of bounds. Balls that are passed effectively and then mishandled on the 2nd touch do not count as kills. ** Errors are defined as hitting the ball into the net, or out of bounds, or some sort of violation like touching the net.]
For example: Samedy leads the team with 91 kills, but she also has made 25 errors, and she has been given 232 sets to swing at. And 91 minus 25 is 66, and 66 divided by 232 is 0.234, so we say that Samedy is hitting .234. Rollins has 68 kills and 19 errors in 163 attempts, so she’s hitting .301. And Pittman has 34 kills and 9 errors in 72 attempts, so she’s hitting .347.
I think it is reasonable to compare volleyball hitting rates to baseball hitting rates; anything over .300 for an entire season is pretty good, and anything under .220 is not so good. But as is true in all sports, statistics don’t tell the whole story. A significant percentage of Samedy’s attacks are from the back row, which involves a higher degree of difficulty (think homers vs singles), and many of her kills come when the Gophers are in a slump (she’s like a “stopper” in your pitching rotation).
That said, the Gophers’ performance in Saturday’s 5th set was amazing. They had 14 kills and one error in 20 tries, for a team rate of .650. Also amazing was that the Gophers 15 points came on 14 kills and 1 block. We had no aces and Purdue made no errors, so 100% of our points in this critical 5th set came from aggressive play at the net! I don’t think anyone keeps track of this statistic, but maybe they should start.