Shocks vs Hawaii (Really Late Nite With Mike Kennedy)

[lemuel777]

Do you think having to play a late night game hurt them?

[SpanglerFan316]

Do you think having to play a late night game hurt them?

No. They are 18, 19, 20, etc. years old and should be able to play a late game.

I am still unhappy about Lamb's comment on the radio about the service errors. I hope he was just tired.

[The Mad Hatter]

Do you think having to play a late night game hurt them?

No. They are 18, 19, 20, etc. years old and should be able to play a late game.

I am still unhappy about Lamb's comment on the radio about the service errors. I hope he was just tired.

That is his approach to service, and I can't say I disagree with him. He never said that the ratio was good, but rather that, since most of the time if you give a team like Hawaii an easy set they will get the kill, you might as well go for the serve that might be an ace which will also risk a service error.

The problem was that, even assuming Hawaii got to some serves that normally would have been aces, we got 0 aces and a lot of errors. However, the cause of that problem was not our approach to serving, but our execution.

[SpanglerFan316]

Do you think having to play a late night game hurt them?

No. They are 18, 19, 20, etc. years old and should be able to play a late game.

I am still unhappy about Lamb's comment on the radio about the service errors. I hope he was just tired.

That is his approach to service, and I can't say I disagree with him. He never said that the ratio was good, but rather that, since most of the time if you give a team like Hawaii an easy set they will get the kill, you might as well go for the serve that might be an ace which will also risk a service error.

The problem was that, even assuming Hawaii got to some serves that normally would have been aces, we got 0 aces and a lot of errors. However, the cause of that problem was not our approach to serving, but our execution.

http://starbulletin.com/2007/09/08/sports/story03.html

The key may have been Hawaii's short serves over the last 90 minutes, a tactic suggested by UH associate coach Mike Sealy. It disrupted the Shockers' quick attack "and it disrupted their offense, bunched their attackers up, created a little doubt," Shoji said.

I think giving away 19 points is a huge issue. Let us assume your comment "if you give a team like Hawaii an easy set they will get the kill, you might as well go for the serve that might be an ace which will also risk a service error" is correct. How do you explain that doing exactly the opposite of what you suggest was the key to UH's victory?

I think we will just have to disagree. I do not find your argument even slightly convincing.

[The Mad Hatter]

The reason, as Lamb himself said, that Hawaii could serve in that manner effectively was because they had figured out how to effectively block the attacks we were running.

No offense, but I tend to think that Lamb is in a better position that any of us to know whether a float serve would have been effective against what Hawaii was running.

What you are arguing is like saying a basketball team that missed all of their 3-pointers while their opponents were in a zone would have won if they had run a zone themselves. If you are playing a great three point shooting team, you can't solve bad man to man by running a zone.

Whether or not a strategy will work depends upon execution of that strategy and how that strategy matches up with your opponent. Obviously, Lamb believes that going for aces matches up better against what Hawaii does and I have no reason to doubt him. The problem in my mind was not going for the aces, but our utter failure to execute the serves effectively.

[dregn]

Lots and lots of good comments from Hawaii fans on volleytalk about our team. We definately gained some respect last night amongst volleyball fans across the nation.

[SpanglerFan316]

The Mad Hatter: I understand the reasoning you (and Lamb) are using; you don't really need to explain it to me. I just think that on a night when the team is not serving well, it is silly to attempt to get aces. On such a night, it might be better to make sure that the ball gets in play and make Hawaii earn the points you suggest they will win anyway. Who knows, WSU might win one or two of those points??

Lamb said playing Hawaii was like playing a men's team. I think he was saying we had to attempt to get aces. I don't buy this but, if he was correct, WSU should have just folded the tent and given up. If you were coach and you knew in advance each of the 19 serves which would result in a service error, would you do nothing or would you have the server attempt a short, easy serve if the server was good at making such serves? Would you give away 19 points or make UH earn them?

[The Mad Hatter]

The Mad Hatter: I understand the reasoning you (and Lamb) are using; you don't really need to explain it to me. I just think that on a night when the team is not serving well, it is silly to attempt to get aces. On such a night, it might be better to make sure that the ball gets in play and make Hawaii earn the points you suggest they will win anyway. Who knows, WSU might win one or two of those points??

Lamb said playing Hawaii was like playing a men's team. I think he was saying we had to attempt to get aces. I don't buy this but, if he was correct, WSU should have just folded the tent and given up. If you were coach and you knew in advance each of the 19 serves which would result in a service error, would you do nothing or would you have the server attempt a short, easy serve if the server was good at making such serves? Would you give away 19 points or make UH earn them?

I understand your argument, and it is largely an approach issue. I would say this, I don't think coaches normally base strategy under the assumption that their players will not execute.

If you are a good serving team, which we usually are, and you feel aces give you the best bet for service points, I think that you have to base your approach on the assumption that you will execute well.

If you execute well, then you have given yourself the best chance win. If you don't execute, you won't win, but is that really a matter of bad strategy or poor performance? Name me a situation where any coaching strategy gives you a great chance to win when the assumption is that the team will fail to execute the way they practice and usually perform.

If you assume that your team will continue to fail in an area that they usually do well, you might as well give up. It is easy to say in hindsight that if you have 0 aces and 19 errors you would have been better off with easy serves, but during the match I believe a coach rightfully hopes and expects that his team will get some aces in.

I have no problem with soft serving if you see a weakness in the opponent that can be exploited by that kind of serve, but I don't like to do because the coach has given up on his players' ability to perform.

[dregn]

The reason you serve agressive and hard isn't neccesarily to get aces. The stat that we don't get, but you can bet one of those clipboards has on it is what type of serves, and to who, end up causing tough sets and out of system plays. A good serve doesn't need to be an ace to get a point. It can also be one that causes a play that will give you a better chance of your team being able to go for a kill.

[SpanglerFan316]

Mad: You are ignoring the issue of the coach adjusting to the way the match is actually going. This was a criticism some fans (including me) made about Turgeon; he often stuck with his predetermined game strategy no matter how well or poorly it was working at a given point in a game. You seem to be arguing that we stick with a strategy even if it stops working. Dana Altman beat WSU by adjusting his strategy in an attempt to find a winning strategy.

[SpanglerFan316]

The reason you serve agressive and hard isn't neccesarily to get aces. The stat that we don't get, but you can bet one of those clipboards has on it is what type of serves, and to who, end up causing tough sets and out of system plays. A good serve doesn't need to be an ace to get a point. It can also be one that causes a play that will give you a better chance of your team being able to go for a kill.

If hard serves, with some service errors, is winning the match, then go for it. If this approach is not working and the Shocks are losing 27-19 (game 3), 20-10 (game 4) and 13-7 (game 5), MAYBE a change in serving strategy is worth considering. In game 5, WSU had only 2 service errors; maybe Lamb did make adjustments?

[The Mad Hatter]

The reason you serve agressive and hard isn't neccesarily to get aces. The stat that we don't get, but you can bet one of those clipboards has on it is what type of serves, and to who, end up causing tough sets and out of system plays. A good serve doesn't need to be an ace to get a point. It can also be one that causes a play that will give you a better chance of your team being able to go for a kill.

If hard serves, with some service errors, is winning the match, then go for it. If this approach is not working and the Shocks are losing 27-19 (game 3), 20-10 (game 4) and 13-7 (game 5), MAYBE a change in serving strategy is worth considering. In game 5, WSU had only 2 service errors; maybe Lamb did make adjustments?

The question is: Is it not working because it is the wrong strategy or because you are not executing? You are under the assumption that giving Hawaii easy serves would have given us more points than the other strategy, but there is no way to prove that. Hawaii may have won every point that we had a service error by getting easy looks and there may have been points we won by having serves that caused by passes that Hawaii would have won in addition.

Clearly when we didn't serve well, our strategy didn't allow us to win, however that is not proof that another strategy would have given us any better chance.

Think of it this way. What if our only chance of winning was to serve hard, and force bad passes by Hawaii? Clearly you will not win if you do not execute that strategy well, but at least by following the strategy you give yourself the opportunity to execute and win. If you follow a strategy that gives you no chance of winning whether you execute well or not, you cannot win no matter what.

I trust Lamb to decide that a soft serve wouldn't give us a chance of winning. Even if we failed to execute the strategy, continuing to use the approach gives us the best chance to win if we do execute is the best approach.

It is one thing to not adjust your strategy to what an opponent does (as with your Turgeon case), but it is another thing to not adjust your strategy because of unforced errors. I don't see how Hawaii caused us to hit the serve into the net with far more frequency than we have all year. If the lack of execution is caused by what your opponent is doing, you probably need to adjust. If the failure is self inflicted, then a strategy change is not necessarily in order.

[dregn]

I don't have the stats in front of me, but a question to ask is in games 3 and 4 was Hawaii's high side out percentage coming off of kills straight from our serves, long rallies, or our lack of execution when we got our turn on offense? If it's either of the last 2, changing our serve tactics wouldn't have changed that. If it was the 1st then we should have changed. Those are things the coaches map, but something we don't get in our stats unless you want to go through the play by play.

I'm not trying to pick a side here because I don't have the stats that would justify either way. I'm just trying to make general observations about strategy in volleyball.

[SpanglerFan316]

The reason you serve agressive and hard isn't neccesarily to get aces. The stat that we don't get, but you can bet one of those clipboards has on it is what type of serves, and to who, end up causing tough sets and out of system plays. A good serve doesn't need to be an ace to get a point. It can also be one that causes a play that will give you a better chance of your team being able to go for a kill.

If hard serves, with some service errors, is winning the match, then go for it. If this approach is not working and the Shocks are losing 27-19 (game 3), 20-10 (game 4) and 13-7 (game 5), MAYBE a change in serving strategy is worth considering. In game 5, WSU had only 2 service errors; maybe Lamb did make adjustments?

The question is: Is it not working because it is the wrong strategy or because you are not executing? You are under the assumption that giving Hawaii easy serves would have given us more points than the other strategy, but there is no way to prove that. Hawaii may have won every point that we had a service error by getting easy looks and there may have been points we won by having serves that caused by passes that Hawaii would have won in addition.

Clearly when we didn't serve well, our strategy didn't allow us to win, however that is not proof that another strategy would have given us any better chance.

Think of it this way. What if our only chance of winning was to serve hard, and force bad passes by Hawaii? Clearly you will not win if you do not execute that strategy well, but at least by following the strategy you give yourself the opportunity to execute and win. If you follow a strategy that gives you no chance of winning whether you execute well or not, you cannot win no matter what.

I trust Lamb to decide that a soft serve wouldn't give us a chance of winning. Even if we failed to execute the strategy, continuing to use the approach gives us the best chance to win if we do execute is the best approach.

It is one thing to not adjust your strategy to what an opponent does (as with your Turgeon case), but it is another thing to not adjust your strategy because of unforced errors. I don't see how Hawaii caused us to hit the serve into the net with far more frequency than we have all year. If the lack of execution is caused by what your opponent is doing, you probably need to adjust. If the failure is self inflicted, then a strategy change is not necessarily in order.

Clearly when we didn't serve well, our strategy didn't allow us to win, however that is not proof that another strategy would have given us any better chance.
I agree. However, this also does not prove that another strategy would not have given us a better chance. What we do know is that (i) we gave away 19 points and (ii) Hawaii didn't have a lot of trouble dealing with our "hard serves" in games 3 and 4.

On execution: If the KC Royals executed every time, they would be world series champs. Execution is a matter of probability (& training, fatigue, health, etc.) and not an absolute. Our probability of making service errors is too high in my opinion. Hawaii did not cause our service errors but we know that WSU makes a certain number of service errors per game; I'm too lazy to look up the number. Against Hawaii or in the NCAA tourney, this may cause us to lose. Our serving errors have to be reduced if we want to make a deep run in the NCAA tourney this year. One way to reduce service errors is to change the way we serve. Another is to practice and get better at hard serves.

In games 3 & 4, how many times did we "serve hard and force bad passes by Hawaii"? Look at http://www.goshockers.com/downloads1...DB_OEM_ID=7500 and you will find the answer, which is zero (0).
Ball handling errors: 17-17 Brandt, Stephanie (game 1), 21-23 Harsh, Abby (game 2), 7-5 Harsh, Abby (game 3)
Attack errors: 8 by UH (game 3), 6 by UH (game 4)
13 of our 22 points in game 3 came from Shocker kills. 12 of our 19 points in game 4 came from Shocker kills. No bad passes resulted in WSU points in games 3 and 4.

[The Mad Hatter]

My point on bad passes is that they can cause poor sets and hitting errors. There were 14 Hawaii hitting errors in games 3 and 4. I don't know how many of those off of serves as opposed to rallies, but serving hard can give you points by not allowing the opponent to get quick kills and forcing hitting errors, or causing attacks to be dug because they were not in position to put away a hard kill.

As to the probability of success using a hard serve strategy, going into the match WSU had 40 aces to 27 service errors. There was every reason for the coaching staff to think that serving well was within our capacity.

In any case, I think we will have to agree to disagree on that, but hopefully we will serve well enough in the future that this isn't an issue again.