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Parity in College Volleyball Part II: Recruiting, Winning, Mattering
Parity in College Volleyball Part II: Recruiting, Winning, Mattering
Published by BeckysTXA
10-16-2019
Smile Parity in College Volleyball Part II: Recruiting, Winning, Mattering

This is the second of three articles addressing the subject of parity in women’s college volleyball. The third part will be published after the NCAA Championships in December.

Recruiting Top Talent

Volleyball isn’t any different than any other sport, at any level. Whether you’re on a grade-school playground choosing up sides or a Super Bowl Champion, everyone knows the team with the best talent usually wins. That doesn’t mean any team, on any given day, can’t be beaten. It’s hard to find the data that shows parity has arrived in collegiate women’s volleyball, but it might be coming. And parity will probably start on the recruiting trail and maybe the transfer market. So where does Dayton stack up with the teams on it’s schedule this season with regard to top-talent?

We've included several graphs to illustrate both out-of-conference matches and A10 teams. The first disclaimer about this data is it’s a manual process looking at a couple hundred web pages to compile. There is a possibility some recruits are missing, but it’s been checked and double checked to be as accurate as possible. The categories of Top 100, Top 125, Top 250 come from prepvolleyball.com’s Senior Aces annual lists and using richkern.com’s alpha-sort tool for all years 2018 and older. For 2019, the infrormation is only from manual look-ups on prepvolleyball. However, players change their names, they change positions in college, they transfer, and they take redshirt years that may or may not be noted on the university’s roster pages. Compiling this data started before the season began, and it was discovered not every team had their complete rosters posted. Thus, there may be a small amount of errors, but they should be minor such as a missing recruit versus a large over-statement of the number of recruits in each category.

Additionally, international players are not ranked, but they are absolutely making high-level contributions and have to be accounted for when evaluating talent. Some subjective, but logical, decisions were made to account for these players. Basically an international player must play more than 50% of the sets to be considered a player that would have been at least a Top 250 player. However, a couple additional subjective decisions impacted the final counts. In one case, there was an international player who has played most of the team’s sets, but the team has an RPI over 250 and the player’s stats were well below an average player at their position. Those additional facts make it hard to believe this player would have been a ranked player coming out of high school and they are not listed on the graph counts for that team. In another case, a team that finished ranked in the Top 25 had an international player that played slightly under the 50% marker. However, this player played every set of this team’s NCAA matches and all of the regular season sets at the end of the season. It’s not known if there was an injury that moved this player into the starting rotation or if the player beat out a starter at the end of the year. Their stats were good and therefore this player is counted in the international numbers for the team. Finally, the graph on recruits has no variable designating collegiate experience. There are teams that are heavy in Top 100 recruits that are freshmen.



Based on the level of top-talent, Dayton sits just above the middle of our OOC schedule (there were two matches against Miami, OH). We still have Cincinnati ahead of us on October 30th, but our record against teams played is 7-6. Based on top-talent counts, UD “upset” Michigan, but was “upset” by SMU. And, of course, all Flyer fans want the 5-set losses to Florida and Texas A&M back. Otherwise, the top-talent factor played out as expected. Missouri is an interesting study. They are currently 10-4 and ranked #25. They have lost to ranked #1 Baylor, #16 KY, and #22 Hawaii. But, this past week they took their first loss to a team they should have beaten, Ole Miss. With four Top 100s, they seem to be a little “out-of-order” in the above graph, so we took a closer look at their two international players. One is the starting setter and the other the right side OH. Both are juniors and have stats that are right in line with the positions they play. On the 25th ranked team, it’s highly probable at least one of these players would have been a Top 100, and possibly both. If this assumption is correct, Missouri’s placement on the graph is “in order” of talent.



A picture is worth a 1000 words, but does it tell the whole story? Several times this season, we’ve said UD should sweep an A10 opponent. This graph illustrates why. No one in the A10 recruits top-talent like Dayton. To date, we’ve dropped one set in the conference. The toughest conference matches come in November. Since the conference titles will more than likely come down to UD and VCU, a closer look at VCU is in order.

The first thing you need to know is their one Top-250 is a freshman setter who has not played this year and it looks like she will be a redshirt. Next, they play a nine-player rotation. Seven of those nine are seniors or grad students, plus one junior and one sophomore. VCU is more experienced than Dayton. VCU’s best player is senior MB Jasmin Sneed from Texas. Sneed is only 6-0, but leads the country in blocks per set at 1.74 and is #74 in hitting percentage. She and Jamie Peterson are the two leading candidates for A10 POY. Sneed was an unranked prep player coming out of high school. As was Texas native Dajah Ard, VCU’s senior setter. On paper, Dayton should sweep VCU in November, but I doubt many people would place a bet on a sweep.

Historically, data shows a program has got to have top talent to get to the Sweet 16. As a program, Dayton is still working to achieve this goal. So we pulled the data for the teams that made the Sweet 16 in 2018 to see how Dayton’s current talent compares. We’ve also graphed-out the 2018 Elite 8 and Final 4 teams.









It becomes clear from these graphs how important Top-100 talent is in achieving a Sweet 16 run (or deeper). Dayton is in the neighborhood of only San Diego and Washington St, so we will take a closer look at those two rosters from 2018. The first thing of note is Dayton is only close to two of the 16 teams making it a 12.5% chance of making the Sweet 16 with our current top-talent level. It’s of course only a one-year sample, but doubtful it would change in the positive if you looked at the last six years. It’s probable the percentage over that time could go down. (We will look at the 2019 Sweet 16 teams in December after the tournament.)

San Diego made this Sweet 16 with a young team. They played a two-setter offense. Both setters were international players, one a junior and the other a freshman. They had two young OHs that were Top-100 players. One a freshman and the other a sophomore. They had a junior MB who was not a ranked player. The rest of their rotation were Top-250 players. Two seniors, two sophomores and one freshman. It will be interesting to see if San Diego can make another run this season because they were so young last year.

The 2018 San Diego team is pretty close to our current Flyer team, but there are some differences. USD had two freshmen in their rotation, UD currently has none. USD only had one L/DS player in the rotation – a freshman Top-250 player. That means they have more OHs than Dayton that can play six rotations. USD had only one player that wasn’t ranked in their rotation, a MB. Dayton consistently uses three non-ranked players, one MB and two DS. San Diego beat Cal Poly in the first round and upset #11 USC in the second round to get to the Sweet 16.

Washington St was a very experienced team last year. They played no freshmen in their rotation and only one Top-250 sophomore OH. They had seven seniors on the court and two juniors. All three of their Top-100 players started, but they are not “high” Top-100s (#62, #76, #80). Dayton consistently lands those levels of Top-100 players. Just like Dayton, they have two DSs and one MB in their rotation that were unranked recruits. The other three rotation players are Top-250s. The 2018 Wazzu team is more experienced than the Flyers this season, but the top talent in the rotation is almost a mirrored image. Their path to the Sweet 16 included a win over No. Arizona and over #19 Tennessee. Dayton also played #19 Tennessee in mid-September and won 3-2. Washington State split with #18 Washington last year. Both were 5-set matches. Dayton played Washington once last year and lost in a 5-set match.

On paper the current Flyer squad matches up pretty close with these two Sweet 16 teams. Is it possible to get to the second weekend with our current talent? The answer is “yes”. But…you have to remember the probability is still only a 12.5% chance based on this one-year sample. And you have to get good match-ups the first weekend. Washington State was the 16th seed last year. They got to host the first two rounds against Northern Arizona and Tennessee. If Dayton had gotten that seed and opponents, I would have liked our chances to make the Sweet 16 last year. Coulda, woulda, shoulda adds up to nothing. Programs like Dayton have to work even harder to earn a host seed in the first weekend. We won’t be in that position this year.

Winning More P5 Matches

The path to hosting the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament is paved through P5 victories. The “rules” have changed since Dayton hosted its last NCAA match. Today you have to earn a Top-16 seed in the tournament to host because everyone puts in a bid these days. That was not the case in the past. Another point in the argument is that volleyball is growing in popularity.

An argument can also be made that scheduling P5 schools helps when recruiting top talent. In volleyball, Dayton has done a good job of getting both road and home matches against P5 programs. And in the Horsmon years, UD has been competitive in several of these matches every year.

“I think there’s a lot of great ‘mid-major’ programs right now and a lot of programs on their way to being consistent threats to the top programs,” Horsmon said. “It’s always great to get a big win against a top program, but those programs who have been getting one or two of those wins consistently over the past few years are the ones you want to look out for going forward.”

So how does Dayton stack up in recent years against P5 schools? I’ve broken this out into three categories. 1. Wins 2. Competed. 3. Losses.

2015 - Competed 1 (2-3 loss to Baylor). Losses 2 (Iowa St, Penn St).
2016 – Wins 1 (3-2 Northwestern). Losses 1 (Pitt).
2017 – Wins 1 (3-0 Cincinnati). Losses 3 (IA St, Pitt, tOSU).
2018 – Wins 2 (3-2 TN, 3-2 tOSU). Competed 3 (2-3 KS, 2-3 WA, 2-3 Cincinnati). Losses 3 (KY, Pitt, Louisville)
2019 – Wins 2 (3-2 MI, 3-2 KS St). Competed 2 (2-3 TXAM, 2-3 FL). Losses 4 (Louisville, MO, SMU, tOSU). TBD-Cincinnati.

Conferences have re-organized over the years making it somewhat difficult to compare apples to apples. But during Horsmon’s first era at Dayton, he was starting to land more top-level recruits on a consistent basis before he left after the 2007 season. Those recruits built a strong resume of P5 wins during their careers between 2006 and 2010, the last year the majority of the rotation was Horsmon recruits. Their wins included the following:

2006 – Arizona, Indiana, Tulane, Connecticut
2007 – Illinois, Purdue, Utah, North Carolina, Cincinnati
2008 – Northwestern, Illinois, Louisville
2009 – Purdue, Wake Forest, Connecticut, Oregon State, Cincinnati
2010 – Pittsburgh, Arizona State, Baylor

Horsmon & Company are starting to get on another recruiting role, one that is even more impressive than during Horsmon’s first era at UD. In 2020 we will have four Top-100 recruits for the first time ever, one Top-110 and seven Top-250s for a total of 12 ranked recruits, again, our most ever. The past two years we have been able to schedule about a third of our matches against P5 schools. If we can do that again in 2020, we will have an opportunity to compete for 8-10 P5 wins. We will have a level of talent that is capable of turning those “competed” matches into wins. The question is if we can learn to play at a high level more consistently and for a greater percentage of a match in order to win more P5 matches and to dominate and sweep matches against teams that have less talent.

Upsets, Near Upsets, and 5-Set Matches

There has been a lot of talk this season on Volleytalk as to the number of upsets and near upsets. The biggest problem in this discussion is how do you define an upset? A lot of the fans on the forum like using Pablo versus the NCAA’s RPI or AVCA Top-25 poll when evaluating the true ranking placement of all 335 Division I teams. Pablo factors in home, away and neutral courts plus the scores of each set in its calculations. The “problem” with Pablo is at the beginning of the season there is still a large percentage of the calculation based on data for each team from the previous year. As the season matures, Pablo becomes very accurate at predicting what team should win a matchup. Historically, on Volleytalk’s weekly predict-the-winner contests, Pablo has finished very high in the standings for the season. Pablo is hard to beat. But the first 4-6 weeks of the season, it’s not as accurate because of the previous season’s data in its calculation. Similar circumstances can be said for the AVCA poll where last year’s finish impacts the first few weeks of voting. And, the NCAA’s RPI doesn’t even publish until after week six.

Therefore, measuring actual upsets on a level evaluation is difficult. It’s very subjective instead of quantitative. But there are several subjective factors in play this season. One of those is the fact that on a weekly basis, fans on Volleytalk this season have had a running thread listing upsets. The evaluating measuring element is different (ie Pablo, AVCA poll, etc.) but in the last 10 years there has never been a weekly thread and from week to week there seems to be between 10 and 20 “upsets” each week. At a minimum, the very existence of these weekly threads indicates fans were surprised by the outcome of a lot of matches so far this season. So subjectively, I think you have to say there have been more upsets and near upsets this season, even if you can’t quantitatively build a model to produce hard data.

Because of this subjective conclusion, I wondered about the number of 5-set matches across all DI matches. So I asked UDPride member Figgie123 to crank up his stat machine to look at 5-set matches. Here are the results for percentage of 5-set matches in a season. 2019 numbers are for matches through 10/10/19.

2011 – 19.9%
2012 – 19.6%
2013 – 19.4%
2014 – 19.3%
2015 – 19.1%
2016 – 20.1%
2017 – 19.1%
2018 – 20.4%
2019 – 20.5%

Conclusion: 5-set matches offer no clue to parity in the sport. They run 19-20% in any given year.

So Will Any of this Matter at the End of the Season?

I think some parity is creeping into the sport, but currently it’s still a low percentage factor. Last year, two Sweet-16 teams clearly had less top talent than the other 14. We will look at this again in December. One year is not a trend. There appears to be more “upsets” this season, but it’s a subjective conclusion at this point. There are more head coaches coming into the sport that played the sport at a high level. They may impact the recruiting of top talent in the future. There was a tick up in 2020, but this needs to be tracked over the next couple years to see if it’s a trend. And there are more youth participating in the sport at a younger age and in larger numbers than every before. This increase in numbers will raise the talent-bar coming out of high school for a larger number of recruits. How this talent gets distributed in the marketplace will be interesting to follow. But will it matter in the end?

Volleytalk, poster “badgerbreath” is a Wisconsin fan and has more than 11,600 posts since 2014.

“I think we’ve had a broad influx of talent, which has raised the floor of play across the NCAA, badgerbreath said. “Early in the season especially, that can lead to upsets as teams are getting their feet under them. Things tend to get sorted out as the tournament arrives, but there is no doubt that the NCAA is far more competitive than it use to be.”

Poster “Cubicle No More” is a Hawaii fan who has more than 16,600 posts since 2002.

“I feel like we’ve seen seasons where there have been lots of ‘upsets’ during the regular season,” Cubicle No More said. “…but then comes tourney time, the usual suspects end up in the Final Four, even if one or two Cinderella teams make a deep run in the tournament into the Sweet 16 or Elite 8.”

Part three of this series will publish in December after the NCAA Champion is crowned. We will look at this year’s Sweet 16 teams and their top-talent in a continued search to identify any trends that indicate parity may or may not be impacting the collegiate game, and how Dayton’s program can capitalize on any of these trends.
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  #1  
By Columbia Blue on 10-17-2019, 12:08 PM
Thanks Becky -- amazing work!
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  #2  
By BeckysTXA on 10-19-2019, 06:02 AM
The Week 8 upsets Thread is up and running over on volleytalk. There have been 10-20 upsets each week this year. Biggest one so far this week...San Diego over BYU. 2018 Sweet 16 team over Final 4. As mentioned above, San Diego was a young team last year and will be an interesting team to follow in the tournament this year. BYU is the one non-P5 team that has consistently landed 2 Top 100s each year over the last 6 years (they landed 3 for 2020) and who has consistantly made the Sweet 16 or better since 2011.
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