Nerdly Nebraska.

2023-2024 HuskerGeek Ratings Leaders

Sport School Rating
ViPR D1 Volleyball Wisconsin 1,718.6737

Football michigan 11.0495
Men's Basketball arizona 10.1261
Women's Basketball south carolina 11.9381
Ice Hockey quinnipiac 9.0719
Men's Soccer stanford 8.6575
Women's Soccer florida st 11.3869
Women's Volleyball wisconsin 11.6155
Field Hockey northwestern 9.8733

ViPR NCAA Volleyball Ratings

Division 1

Rnk. Team Conference
1st Wisconsin Big Ten
2nd Pittsburgh ACC
3rd Stanford Pac-12
4th Oregon Pac-12
5th Nebraska Big Ten
6th Texas Big 12
7th Kentucky SEC
8th Arizona St. Pac-12
9th Tennessee SEC
10th Louisville ACC

Division 1 Standouts

Award Name Team
POY
AOY
SOY
DPOY
-- Expand Division 1 --

Division 2

Rnk. Team Conference
1st Wayne St. (NE) NSIC
2nd Tampa Sunshine State
3rd Concordia-St. Paul NSIC
4th CSUSB CCAA
5th Mo.-St. Louis GLVC
6th MSU Denver RMAC
7th Cal State LA CCAA
8th Neb.-Kearney Mid-America Intercollegiate
9th Regis (CO) RMAC
10th West Tex. A&M Lone Star

Division 2 Standouts

Award Name Team
POY
AOY
SOY
DPOY
-- Expand Division 2 --

Division 3

Rnk. Team Conference
1st Juniata Landmark
2nd Wis.-Whitewater WIAC
3rd Claremont-M-S SCIAC
4th Wis.-Oshkosh WIAC
5th Northwestern-St. Paul UMAC
6th Hope Michigan Intercol. Ath. Assn.
7th Wis.-Stevens Point WIAC
8th Emory UAA
9th Trinity (TX) SCAC
10th Calvin Michigan Intercol. Ath. Assn.

Division 3 Standouts

Award Name Team
POY
AOY
SOY
DPOY
-- Expand Division 3 --

BPR NCAA Women's Basketball Ratings

Division 1

Rnk. Team Conference
-- Expand Division 1 --

Division 2

Rnk. Team Conference
-- Expand Division 2 --

Division 3

Rnk. Team Conference
-- Expand Division 3 --

Advanced Rate Statistics for NCAA Women’s Volleyball

Or Why Per Set Statistics are Bullsh*t

Pop quiz.

Question 1: How many points is a set in NCAA Division 1 Volleyball?

If you said twenty-five, you are wrong. If you said twenty-five except in a fifth set when it is only fifteen, you are wrong.  If you said it depends, then congratulations you have won the game.

Question 2: Name each team that corresponds to the primary or secondary color referenced in the following table.

Hint: These figures are the average points per set for each Big Ten team last season.

Team Points Per Set
Red 41.12
Blue 42.49
Red 42.50
Red 42.87
Red 42.94
Orange 43.06
Purple 43.19
Yellow 43.23
Red 43.43
Red 43.51
Yellow 43.88
Green 43.96
Red 43.97
Blue 44.29

Answers are at the bottom.

This presents a significant issue when it comes to doing rate statistics.   A four kill per set player at 41.12 points per set would average more than 4.3 kps if they had the same kill rate and played for the last team in the table averaging 44.29 points per set.  A quick look at the current KPS table on NCAA Stats says that’s the difference between being 57th and 34th.  A significant difference.  Additionally, because the gap will widen linearly as the initial numbers grow, the result is that the players at the very top of the chart can be misrepresented to the highest degree.  That’s simply unacceptable when trying to use a statistic to formulate any significant statistical argument.

And that’s not even the worst example I could come up with.

Per Set statistics are meaningless without additional context.  The context that a person would need to supply to make those statistics worthwhile is tedious and time consuming to track and calculate.   This results in volleyball fans and the media continually relying on and relaying statistics that in reality mean very little.

It needs to change, and that’s the purpose of this article and a couple of pages that I’ve now added to the site.  While per set statistics are exceptionally flawed, points are not.  In fact, points applied in the right way can be exceptionally accurate when calculating a rate statistic.

Here are the top ten players on the current(9/15/2018) stats.ncaa.org KPS leaders table.

NCAA Volleyball D1 KPS Leaders 9-15-2018

Here is the same list, but instead of per set, the rates are per point in each team’s games.

Kills Per 100 Points

Rk. Name Team KPP
1 13.8140
2 12.8452
3 11.5678
4 11.4781
5 10.9756
6 10.9277
7 10.8782
8 10.8467
9 10.7735
10 10.6240

There are differences and there can be extreme differences. In fact, with many of the common statistics volleyball fans and the media use, using points is inherently flawed.  When measuring kill rates for players, total points in a match has an inherent flaw.  Specifically, during any match there will inevitably be points wher a player who plays for all rotations will still have no chance to get a kill, namely aces and service errors.

AN: There are caveats beyond this as well. Not every player plays six rotations and there are points beyond aces and service errors during which a player would also by definition not have a chance to get a kill. Rotational errors are the specific issue in this case because I did not have the foresight to track them efficiently in my database and will need to do some significant redesign before I can efficiently account for those points.

Beyond using total points for a rate, simple subtraction can be used measure the rate at which a player gets a kill for every point in play.

This is the table for the statistic named Kills per Point-In-Play.  Original name, I know.

Kills Per 100 Points In Play

Rk. Name Team KPIP
1 16.6556
2 14.8148
3 13.5862
4 13.3621
5 13.2583
6 13.1679
7 12.9555
8 12.6316
9 12.6050
10 12.5421

It’s not even the same list as the original per point list.  While this approach is not currently perfect, it’s still much better than using per set because the denominator of the statistic being calculated means the same thing across all players.  The context per point statistics provide is important because without it volleyball statistics are very nearly meaningless.  An instance of “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” if you will.  Making even incremental progress toward better understanding and knowledge is important.

Measuring virtually every statistic by points played improves it drastically, but Aces and Service Errors per set make the least sense as a statistic.  It is entirely possible to play a set in which a primary server will not serve during the set.  In fact, in fifth sets, it actually isn”t all that rare.  Luckily, NCAA Play-By-Play pages happen to track exactly who serves each point, a fortunate thing in this instance because those pages can be used to get per serve rates for aces, service errors, and service points.

AN: This(A primary server not getting the opportunity to serve.) actually happened to Lauren Stivrins in Set 3 of the Nebraska vs Missouri State less than three hours after I saved my latest draft of this article. Yeah, that happened.

These statistics and more have been made available on each team page as well as Division and Conference leaders.  The leaders are available using the “View Complete Advanced Statistics Leaders” link on each division or conference page.

And that friends, is why per set statistics are bullsh*t.

Answer Key

Top to Bottom: Rutgers, Penn State, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Northwestern, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Purdue, Michigan State, Ohio State, Michigan

The Best This Year

These are the current all sport rankings for the school year of 2023-2024.
Rk. Team Sport Record MOV DOM ELO EFF SYN PTS ALL
1st south carolina Women's Basketball 8-0-0 11.9568 11.8776 11.3891 11.9432 11.9381 12.7584 9.2065
2nd wisconsin Women's Volleyball 29-3-0 11.6838 11.6531 11.5752 11.6836 11.6155 10.6641 12.2498
3rd nebraska Women's Volleyball 31-1-0 11.5800 11.6014 11.6994 11.5799 11.5923 10.6056 12.0968
4th stanford Women's Volleyball 29-3-0 11.5499 11.5860 11.7603 11.5498 11.5919 10.8210 11.7696
5th florida st Women's Soccer 22-0-1 9.7016 11.6117 12.0839 9.9324 11.3869 5.6587 -0.4475
6th michigan Football 13-0-0 10.4326 11.2718 11.4605 10.4298 11.0495 8.9870 9.2252
7th oregon Women's Volleyball 29-5-0 10.9488 10.9291 10.9123 10.9487 10.9074 10.3429 11.0535
8th texas Women's Volleyball 25-4-0 10.7214 10.7419 10.8258 10.7211 10.7337 9.0420 12.1461
9th oregon Football 11-2-0 10.7030 10.5850 10.2392 10.6995 10.6998 10.6529 8.2311
10th pittsburgh Women's Volleyball 28-4-0 10.7422 10.7141 10.6153 10.7420 10.6749 9.7254 11.3591
11th louisville Women's Volleyball 27-4-0 10.5450 10.5500 10.5562 10.5450 10.5278 10.0570 10.5296
12th ohio st Football 11-1-0 9.9154 10.6716 10.9400 9.9078 10.5012 7.1617 9.9552
13th arizona Men's Basketball 7-0-0 10.0684 9.9429 9.9275 10.0296 10.1261 11.4370 6.6435
14th penn st Football 10-2-0 9.7543 10.3166 9.9629 9.7512 10.0862 7.8988 9.0590
15th texas Women's Basketball 10-0-0 9.9015 9.8244 10.0594 9.8921 10.0208 10.8130 7.3915
16th byu Men's Basketball 8-0-0 9.7804 9.8849 10.0261 9.7610 9.9736 9.4412 7.7846
17th texas Football 12-1-0 9.5135 9.8675 10.4115 9.5123 9.9566 8.4077 8.2296
18th purdue Men's Basketball 8-1-0 9.2755 9.4310 11.2927 9.2539 9.8892 9.7727 6.7295
19th northwestern Field Hockey 21-2-0 8.7679 9.9480 10.5683 8.7678 9.8733 8.1498 8.5076
20th north carolina Field Hockey 18-3-0 8.7965 9.8329 10.5039 8.7964 9.8128 9.9508 7.0429
21st stanford Women's Basketball 8-1-0 9.3694 9.6397 10.7269 9.3461 9.7857 11.0606 6.2168
22nd washington st Women's Volleyball 26-8-0 9.8293 9.7997 9.7478 9.8293 9.7776 9.4525 9.7199
23rd stanford Women's Soccer 20-1-4 7.3844 9.9502 11.0841 7.2033 9.6890 -1.2521 5.1776
24th nc state Women's Basketball 9-0-0 8.9364 9.0991 11.1934 8.9392 9.5297 9.0403 7.3454
25th tennessee Women's Volleyball 26-5-0 9.5554 9.5124 9.4485 9.5553 9.4931 8.7909 9.9338
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