For many sports fans, there’s no better time than NCAA Tournament time. Basketball has March Madness, but for women’s volleyball, the magic month is December. The first round of both the DI and DII tournaments starts on Thursday, and it will be amazing–dozens of high stakes win-or-go-home games to watch.
What some volleyball fans may not know, however, is that the DIII women’s volleyball tournament starts before Thanksgiving with an exciting three day frenzy–all thirty-two first round matches on the first day, sixteen second round matches the very next day, and eight third-round regional finals held the third day. And while the first couple of rounds of the DI and DII tournament are this week, we’ll also get the quarterfinals, semifinals, and championship match for DIII all in Bloomington.
As with basketball, the NCAA volleyball tournament has both high drama, amazing comebacks, and super-competitive matches occurring in every round (alongside more lopsided matches at the same time). So it’s the perfect opportunity to explore my new volleyball match Competitiveness and Comeback Ratings!
I’ve analyzed the first three rounds of the DIII tournament, generating win probability graphs and Competitiveness and Comeback Ratings for every match. You can see all of them in the table at the end of the post, but I wanted to talk through some of the patterns I found when running the numbers and some of the highlights (or, depending on which team you root for, I guess they could be lowlights!). Here’s a scatterplot of the Competitiveness and Comeback Ratings for all 56 matches in the first three rounds of the NCAA DIII tournament this year (for an explanation of the ratings, read this post). The light blue circles represent three set matches, the blue triangles are four set matches, and the dark blue represent five set matches. Across all fifty-six matches, the average Comeback Rating was 62% (ranging from 50% to 97%), and the average Competitiveness Rating was 4.6 (ranging from 1.5 to 10.6).
I’m sure it surprises no one, but overall, three set matches are less competitive and have fewer comebacks than four set matches, which in turn are less competitive than five set matches. But while that’s true overall, there are some comebacks in three set matches that are as big as the comebacks we see in four set matches, and four set matches that are as competitive as some of the five set matches.
One four set match stands out as less competitive on this measure than most of the three set matches – and once you see the set scores, you’ll understand why. In the first round of the tournament, La Verne (which was ranked the number one team in DIII for much of the regular season), lost the first set of their match to Penn State Behrend 22-25, but then won the next three sets 25-5, 25-5 and 25-3! La Verne’s win probability dropped as low 29% after losing the first point of the second set, but it was all La Verne after that. So while the Comeback Rating is relatively high (71%), the Competitiveness Rating is fairly low (3.2).
In terms of aggregate Competitiveness and Competition Ratings, La Verne’s first round four-set match actually looks fairly similar to some of the three set matches that involved substantial comebacks in the first set. For example, St. Olaf was down seven points fairly late in its first set (12-19) against Northwestern St. Paul, but fought back to win the first set 28-26. The second and third set were comfortable wins for St. Olaf (25-14, 25-15), and the aggregate Comeback and Competitiveness Ratings (68%, 3.2) for the three set match were very close to La Verne’s four set match (71%, 3.2).
There was also a clear pattern across the rounds–the matches became more competitive, with larger comebacks as the tournament went on, as teams became more evenly matched. In the scatterplot below, the markers represent which round each match was in. The average Comeback Rating in the first round was 59%, which increased to 62% in the second round, and jumped to 71% in the third round. The pattern for Competitiveness Rating was even clearer–it averaged 3.95 in the first round, 5.08 in the second round and 6.24 in the third round. Four of the eight biggest comebacks in the tournament so far happened in round three, and 11 of the 15 most competitive matches were in rounds two and three, despite there being more first round matches than round two and three matches combined (32 vs. 24).
The match with the greatest Comeback Rating (97%) was the hard-fought match in Round 3 between La Verne and Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins won the first two sets 25-17 and 25-22, but La Verne fought back in the third, pulling away just enough in the second half of the set to win 25-21 and avoid the sweep. However, La Verne fell behind yet again in the fourth, and their match win probability fell as low as 3% when they were down 16-20 in the fourth. But ten points later (with six of seven La Verne points coming on kills by NCAA DIII Player of the Year, Mya Ray), La Verne tied the set at 23-23. They fought off a Johns Hopkins match point at 24-25-yet again on a kill by Mya Ray-eventually winning the fourth set 27-25. The fifth set was tight, but La Verne advanced to the quarterfinals with a 15-13 win. Here’s the match win probability graph for the La Verne – Johns Hopkins match.
Not every team going to Bloomington was tested the way La Verne was, but it was striking how competitive the third round of the tournament was. Only one of the eight matches finished in three sets (Wisconsin Oshkosh’s win over WashU), and half of them went to five sets.
Looking ahead, we can see which of the remaining eight teams have been challenged the most in the tournament so far, and which have had the greatest comebacks. La Verne had the greatest comeback to advance, but Calvin and Colby were not far behind, coming back in fifth sets after their match win probability had dropped to just 10%. Overall, Berry, Calvin, Colby, La Verne, and Eau Claire faced more competitive matches with opponents in the first three matches than Oshkosh, Trinity or overall top seed East Texas Baptist University.
| Team | R1-R3 Competitiveness | Greatest Comeback |
| Berry | 17.0 | 69% |
| Calvin | 19.9 | 89% |
| Colby | 16.9 | 91% |
| ETBU | 10.0 | 52% |
| La Verne | 14.3 | 97% |
| Trinity | 9.0 | 56% |
| UW Eau Claire | 13.5 | 79% |
| UW Oshkosh | 8.6 | 56% |
Have the teams that fought through tougher matches in the tournament shown that they can win tough matches, and thus are more prepared to fight for the title than the teams that have been less challenged on their road to Bloomington? Or will the teams that have been more dominant in their early matches continue to be dominant, even against tougher opponents? It will be exciting to watch and find out!
Notes:
- Photo Credit: csusports.com
- Full Competitiveness Ratings and Comeback Ratings below: