It all depends, doesn’t it? On the ball speed generated by jump spinning, the degree of “dance” a jump float has on it, the skill level of players on the other side of the net to pass either one, the likelihood for it to either ace or present an unearned side-out gift to an opponent, and lots more. The risk vs. reward discussion related to it I’ve heard summarized in many ways: “Put at least 75% of spins in play to consider using it.” Others declare, “If the Ace/Error ratio is no worse than 1:2, then spin it, don’t float.” Some at higher levels in the men’s college game maintain “Only if your spin is at least 55mph should it be considered a viable threat.” Just a few of the talking points shared by experts to me over the last couple of years.
Those who preach only aggressive spins frame their argument like an indirect mathematical proof. They start with the assumption a serve against a worthy receive will fail, then follow it through with a logical argument determining the only way to contradict that assumption is “Spin it to win it!” No doubt cogent reasoning whose only risk for a false conclusion is an initial premise not true to begin. It may not be, though, as skill passing a jump spin continues to get better, faster. But the logic is solid as rock, akin to the same used by Ed Harris playing the role of Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director for Apollo 13, who when discussing solutions to a life and death crisis for American astronauts in 1970 said, “Lets look at it this thing from a standpoint of status. What do we have on the spaceship that’s good?” That time it worked out well. If you asked Matthew McConaughey to narrate the ending, his response, no doubt, would be, “Alright, Alright, Alright.” And if it was good enough for Rene’ Descartes arriving at “I think, therefore I am,” almost 400 years ago, then it should be good enough for the smartest volleyball minds to know jump spins win, right?
Conditions vary significantly from introductory club volleyball to the Olympic stage, and arguments depend on if it’s the men’s or women’s game, too. Not just for the reasons you might think, though. It has less to do with the physiology of men & women than it does with the fact the net is 8½% higher because men on average are 8½% taller, but the court isn’t 8½% longer. Physics, not the physical is the key factor. Only if the court were 2½ ft. longer for men on each side of the net, would any comparisons by gender for serving a spin or a float have a point in determining how best to earn a point. The most significant reason why a Big 10 Women’s volleyball study showed float offers a better chance to maximize point win rates in the Women’s game. Once establishing a level and/or gender to focus the discussion, now consider the wide variability for competency within any of those realms. Where does one begin to address this question, then?
A fundamental truth for winning volleyball games, whether side-out scoring from the past or rally scoring since the beginning of this century, is to serve more winning points than your opponent. Both teams side-out one to one, so there are two means to accomplish this objective. Either serve in a way to increase chances to win a point, for the right to do it again, or pass an opponent’s serve in a way increasing the chance to prevent they from doing it again. There are no second chances to make a first impression, and there are no second chances to touch a ball first, either. The reason many rightly reduce the game to just serve and pass. These two essential skills are prerequisites to winning. In a parallel universe your counterpart would jump spin to the exact same opponent in the same rotation you jump float in yours, and then you’d compare notes later when these universes collide. What a perfect experiment that would be! Since Einstein didn’t tell us how to go there or do that, and Marvel has left some critical pieces to the imagination, consider the following to answer this question as if Einstein had and Marvel hadn’t.
The formula below shows a relationship between a server’s jump spin ace rate (As) and error rate (Es) to a condition (Ef) for when a float serve is expected to be more productive scoring points. An alternative verbal description is below it, and case studies demonstrating how they help make informed decisions below both: (The math behind the origin of this formula is available, but I suggest only those extremely comfortable with advanced algebra, and some patience to go with it, be the one’s who should click here to see it.)
NOTE regarding the value of k: The value of k varies with gender and level of play, certainly. Across the whole Men’s D3 Landscape from the 120th ranked team the the #1 ranked team, I suspect k moves from about 1.5 to at least 3.0 in this formula, but not in a linear fashion. As the opponent rank gets closer to #1 in the Men’s D3 landscape, the k accelerates to the high end of the k interval. All this really means is that a higher service error to service ace ratio should be tolerated by a spin server as the opponent’s ability to both pass, and its functionality to earn a 1st ball side-out gets better, before any decision is made having a player transition from spin serve to a float. The formula above quantifies when that discussion is warranted. Of course it relates to the goals of the team, how many of its servers are already floating, and the nature of the server’s team to defend or even block any first ball side-out attempt by an opponent, too.
That is all well and good, but what if I do not know the # of serve attempts in order to know the rate of aces and errors? Most stat sheets are biased toward attacking metrics than serving because they will offer kill attempts, hardly ever providing service attempts. This often leaves just the raw numbers of errors and aces performed as readily accessible. The good news is the formula above can be distilled down to determine a condition for when floating ought to be under consideration as the better option: For R = Ratio of the serve errors to aces, if R – k – 1/2 > 0, then this is the threshold for which serving 100% of float serves in play with no aces would equal the expected point win rate serving jump spins. The larger this difference gets, the more likely a float serve is a team’s better point-scoring option. A second way to express this same exact inequality is R > k + 1/2 i.e. The greater a ratio of errors to serves is above k plus a half, then the more likely a float should be a serve of choice rather than a spin. Consider a 3-year career serving arc for St. John Fisher player Gavin Newman on the graphic below to demonstrate some of these ideas discussed above – He being one that should never be considering a float because of the terminal ratios he has consistently produced:
As I continued to ponder the title of this post, “Should I Spin or Should I Float.” my mind keeps going to a 1981 song by the British Punk Rock Band, “The Clash” – One of their greatest hits, “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” If you have learned anything about my writing, I tend not to ignore any impetus for anything which might offer some entertainment, yours or particularly mine. This is the reason for being willing to act on whatever comes to mind. C’mon man, you can make statistics, rankings, and numerical analysis only so interesting. Here is where this latest pursuit took me. Hope you like it as much as I enjoyed putting it together! I attempted to channel my inner “Weird Al Yankovic!”
Should I stay or should I go? I choose to go for now. Enjoy the off season everyone!