Once each week I intend to continue producing something matchup related that describes the competition between teams. In January it was the “Matchup Metrics” Series. A dozen or so capsules of games every week which looked like they could be very competitive. Either because the demand was heightened by the stature of teams involved, the leverage it might provide down the road for big decisions by small groups of very powerful people, or the proximity of competitors in the T100. That’s now done, but it was rather fun. Plus, it served as quality control, as I have now begun to assess new functions to decide which one should be run to better predict who won. A “Win-Win” outcome compromising none! Knowing what I just wrote can’t be undone, forgive me everyone! Not sure, but I think I just hurt myself. May have pulled a hammy!
For phase 2 in February, a new 4-week series being introduced here is “Spotlight.” I choose just a single match that piques my interest and do a deep dive into the first month of data to see if there aren’t some nuggets of interest I can tease away to share with readers. Most of what you see throughout this piece when you click the links will be original graphics that I believe go a long way in telling a story of what’s to come. I invite you to engage over the next month in this series. This week’s spotlight shines on Baldwin Wallace and Misericordia as they answer the bell at 11:00 AM on Saturday morning at Hobart College.
I presently have little knowledge for exactly what a March and April version of Matchups will look like, other than their themes may be “Conference Corner” as conference play heats up in March, and then “Tournament Time” for April. I think that last of these might be self-explanatory. Should anybody want to make suggestions for something they’d like to see in the vein of those themes, I am willing to consider requests. However, should there be any who doesn’t think “Tournament Time” as the name of a theme for a series of posts in April regarding Men’s D3 volleyball is self-explanatory, then maybe I will just thank you for checking in on this first of four “Spotlight” features this month, starting right now:
T100 ratings can produce functional probability forecasts. With just a difference of .21 points between Baldwin Wallace and Misericordia, it doesn’t get much closer to 50-50 than that! No formula required for forecasting near equality! And even though binomial theory suggests a “5-set” contest happens more than 37% of the time with two closely matched teams like this, empirical data from previous years in the real world suggests 30% is more credible. I wish the real world would just stop hasslin’ me! (This, because theory is less “messy” than the real world, AND I like the song by Matchbox Twenty!) The reason a “messy” real world makes a “5-setter” less than expected than theory is because consecutive sets aren’t independent, as much as I might like to think they could be – We’ve all heard of a little thing called momentum, right? Apparently, together with lots of other factors, momentum carries over each time the boys take their walks to the other side of the court after every set. This Cougars vs. Yellow Jackets tilt is one of the highest rated competitive affairs of the year with a Matchup Metric = 9.3, and it happens late enough in the morning to sleep in, and early enough in the day to not interrupt your Saturday afternoon plans! Can’t ask for better. Well, you could, but you just wouldn’t get it!
The Yellow-Jackets swarm you with hitters. The 4 most frequent recipients of the rock whose intention is to attack only represent just half of their team’s overall swings so far this year. This while Cougars attacks are produced primarily by just two “big cats,” significantly more than half the time. Let me be the first to suggest Misericordia’s offense is undoubtedly the more functional of these two offenses across the whole spectrum of D3 defensive squads, but the reason I suspect BW hits .060 better in this one has to do with the expectation for its defense to treat at least one of these two cats like Dr. Pol treats a nasty bull on the farm with his blow gun tranquilizer. For every additional rating point in the T100 a Cougar opponent earns, its offense improves more than .030 points of expected efficiency. In other words, apart from Juniata hitting in the .230’s after having played 9 intense sets in the previous 20 hours, the other AVCA ranked opponents to have played Misericordia each showed the capacity to score on them hitting over .300. However, the Cougar serving game against opponents this year shows it should be up to the task, and will likely minimize some of the small deficit expected by lower efficiency in the live-ball game. Will it be by enough?
Both Inside Hitter & the AVCA Poll say this one goes in favor of Coach Wingert’s squad, and even my eyeball test, having seen both teams “Live on (consecutive) Saturday Night(s)” this year, makes me think they might very well be correct. The thing is my models often produce Gold, my brain usually settles for Silver, and my heart typically brings home the Bronze. I have little skin in the game, so my heart is immune. I am left to either trust the model or go with a couple of other experts while disputing Chris Jones’ very premise in having written the book, “The Eye Test – A Case for Human Creativity in the Age of Analytics.”
There are actually two models at work here. The T100 Rating model has it at 53%. The other would make Ken Pomeroy proud because it utilizes Pythagorean ratios to forecast live-ball probabilities from hitting efficiency forecasts. Taken together with an independent and lesser weighted terminal point component, it puts this match at 65%, also in favor of the “Killer Bees” from BW. I really have no choice but to commit to the analytics, given who I am and what I do. I simply have to ignore my eye-test this time! So sorry Chris.
Besides, this very perceptive author (Chris Jones) is from Ontario, Canada. Although I like his book a whole lot, isn’t it common knowledge Canadians are best known for skating, hockey, and maple syrup, as these things are commonly found in their wheelhouse of expertise, rather than “human creativity” as it relates to volleyball? Before our Canadian friends call me “oat” for my insanely narrow-minded take regarding a mighty fine group of folks from up North, please take note that I spend a small fortune at Tim Horton’s every week, making me a healthy contributor to Canada’s GDP, and I don’t even drink coffee. Those sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwiches on a croissant are pretty tasty, however! And pricey, too. Maybe I need to ask Ramius for 50% raise? I hope my cardiologist isn’t a volleyball fan!
Post Match Follow Up:
Congrats to the Misericordia Cougars for getting the job done today in grand fashion! The only competitive set like I had anticipated for the whole match coming in the 2nd. Their defensive block was outstanding as they never allowed the BW offense to show, what to this point in the season, had been a resilient, if not a high functioning offense against ranked opponents. BW usually hitting in the ballpark of .200, today only able to muster a paltry .053. But as impressive as that was, I have to give some serious kudos to the “Not so Big Cats” supporting cast of the Misericordia offense in this one. It was true that the “Big Cats” (DePalma & Piontkowski) got their 60% swings as anticipated and only hit a combined .147 on this day, the thing that in a vacuum could otherwise make me think that BW found some success, but the supporting cast of Clendening, Defrain, Fennel, and Martin blistered the stat sheet with 18 kills to just a single error, in a mere 30 attempts! The “Not so Big Cats” went from meow to a friggin’ ROAR, hitting .567 to make this analyst eat his words, and then some! Congrats to The Reignman, who likely had to put on his psychologist hat last evening after the Cougars came up short by just a couple in all 3 against #1 Wentworth, and then was swept by the host right after that. The Cougars salvaged their weekend in grand fashion by taking what could have become a linchpin moment for a season full of promise lost, into what very well could become the type of springboard confidence builder to set the stage for an epic run in the MAC.
I suspect with Wentworth up next for the Yellow Jackets, it might very well be them trying to avoid such a linchpin moment for figuratively heading South by the end of this weekend. Coach Mars now becomes the resident psychologist on the bus ride home literally heading West, as he will need to build his team up for the rest of February when his squad negotiates 3 of the next 5 matches against ranked opponents all believed to be even better than the Misericordia team they met today. Everybody from here at Frog-Jump wishes them well on the quest to right their ship!