Nerdly Nebraska.

2023-2024 HuskerGeek Ratings Leaders

Sport School Rating
ViPR D1 Volleyball Wisconsin 1,724.7831

Football ohio st 10.8908
Ice Hockey michigan 5.0000
Men's Soccer marshall 10.0965
Women's Soccer penn st 9.9817
Women's Volleyball wisconsin 12.7753
Field Hockey northwestern 9.9036

ViPR NCAA Volleyball Ratings

Division 1

Rnk. Team Conference
1st Wisconsin Big Ten
2nd Nebraska Big Ten
3rd Stanford Pac-12
4th Pittsburgh ACC
5th Oregon Pac-12
6th Washington St. Pac-12
7th Texas Big 12
8th Tennessee SEC
9th Arkansas 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 MSU Denver RMAC
4th Regis (CO) RMAC
5th Central Wash. Great Northwest
6th Cal Poly Pomona CCAA
7th Ferris St. GLIAC
8th Concordia-St. Paul NSIC
9th CSUSB CCAA
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.-Oshkosh WIAC
3rd Wis.-Whitewater WIAC
4th Claremont-M-S SCIAC
5th Wis.-Stevens Point WIAC
6th Emory UAA
7th Northwestern-St. Paul UMAC
8th Hope Michigan Intercol. Ath. Assn.
9th Calvin Michigan Intercol. Ath. Assn.
10th Transylvania HCAC

Division 3 Standouts

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

BPR NCAA Women's Basketball Ratings

Division 1

Rnk. Team Conference
1st South Carolina SEC
2nd Stanford Pac-12
3rd UConn Big East
4th LSU SEC
5th Indiana Big Ten
6th Iowa Big Ten
7th Virginia Tech ACC
8th Texas Big 12
9th Utah Pac-12
10th Duke ACC
-- Expand Division 1 --

Division 2

Rnk. Team Conference
1st Ashland G-MAC
2nd Grand Valley St. GLIAC
3rd Minn. Duluth NSIC
4th Minnesota St. NSIC
5th Neb.-Kearney Mid-America Intercollegiate
6th Drury GLVC
7th Tampa Sunshine State
8th Mo. Southern St. Mid-America Intercollegiate
9th Augustana (SD) NSIC
10th Central Mo. Mid-America Intercollegiate
-- Expand Division 2 --

Division 3

Rnk. Team Conference
1st NYU UAA
2nd Gust. Adolphus MIAC
3rd Chris. Newport C2C
4th Hope Michigan Intercol. Ath. Assn.
5th Transylvania HCAC
6th Scranton Landmark
7th Smith NEWMAC
8th Loras American Rivers
9th Babson NEWMAC
10th Wis.-Whitewater WIAC
-- 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 wisconsin Women's Volleyball 13-0-0 12.7253 12.8031 12.9231 12.7237 12.7753 7.9336 15.7536
2nd nebraska Women's Volleyball 13-0-0 12.6428 12.6795 12.7749 12.6411 12.6600 7.3848 16.1415
3rd stanford Women's Volleyball 11-2-0 11.8684 11.8997 11.9156 11.8665 11.8654 6.4647 15.6135
4th oregon Women's Volleyball 13-2-0 11.0207 11.0199 11.0098 11.0210 10.9943 11.0966 9.4805
5th ohio st Football 4-0-0 10.2486 10.7650 11.5058 10.2358 10.8908 6.1745 10.8813
6th oregon Football 5-0-0 10.7801 10.3390 8.9310 10.7814 10.3820 9.8405 8.5152
7th washington st Women's Volleyball 14-1-0 10.3684 10.3732 10.4497 10.3685 10.3714 9.7946 9.5550
8th texas Football 5-0-0 9.0627 10.0198 11.7864 9.0648 10.1811 7.1443 8.1470
9th texas Women's Volleyball 9-3-0 10.1037 10.1225 10.1396 10.1019 10.1015 4.8044 13.9807
10th penn st Football 5-0-0 9.1470 10.1928 11.1228 9.1498 10.0976 8.6989 6.9195
11th marshall Men's Soccer 10-0-0 8.7407 10.2671 10.3288 9.3033 10.0965 -1.0484 3.6887
12th louisville Women's Volleyball 12-2-0 10.0963 10.0892 10.0367 10.0958 10.0590 7.9814 10.8373
13th oklahoma Football 5-0-0 10.5835 9.6711 8.5166 10.5837 10.0015 10.3447 7.7612
14th penn st Women's Soccer 10-0-2 7.6467 10.1842 11.3461 6.9546 9.9817 1.5778 3.9807
15th michigan Football 5-0-0 9.2946 10.4015 10.0841 9.2888 9.9557 5.9544 9.5578
16th pittsburgh Women's Volleyball 13-2-0 10.0714 9.9851 9.7377 10.0713 9.9315 9.0951 9.6940
17th northwestern Field Hockey 11-1-0 8.9002 10.0074 10.4377 8.9002 9.9036 8.4301 8.2638
18th north carolina Women's Soccer 8-0-4 7.8574 10.0749 10.8960 7.9989 9.8625 1.7790 4.5981
19th florida Women's Volleyball 10-2-0 9.6944 9.7897 10.0058 9.6932 9.7960 6.0243 12.0208
20th washington st Football 4-0-0 8.4045 9.0345 11.8014 8.3906 9.5945 10.6976 3.9889
21st stanford Men's Soccer 5-1-3 8.0586 9.6144 10.0656 12.5065 9.5428 -0.9948 4.5348
22nd north carolina Field Hockey 8-1-0 8.3500 9.4142 9.8858 8.3501 9.3341 9.6052 6.3743
23rd tennessee Women's Volleyball 13-1-0 9.4304 9.3523 9.2348 9.4297 9.3327 6.9945 10.5760
24th stanford Women's Soccer 10-0-1 7.1463 9.5586 10.5426 7.1860 9.3270 2.6476 3.5607
25th arkansas Women's Volleyball 13-2-0 9.3024 9.3152 9.3913 9.3026 9.3152 9.0857 8.2789
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