Thanks Steve - really helpful as always 👍🏼

Steve - Grateful for your advice. If you take a look at my top two Liberos they have an almost identical skill set except that Crockett is 9 on serve and 12 on setting and Mendieta is the reverse. They also have the same Ovr rating. But I would have thought Mendieta should be higher - based solely on Al's helpful advice that serving is more important for a Libero than setting. Am I missing something?

On the post I've just bumped it says RCV and DEF then SET/SRV. It also says this on the orders page. SET and SRV do add the same amount to the overall score for a Libero. 

To be honest I always considered SRV to be more important and usually only CP SET when I have plenty to spare as a libero tends to SRV 16% of the time and only SET about 10%. 

Thanks Steve

A thing you may not have known: otters hold hands while they're sleeping.

Next up - NET rankings

Last session we beat Quincy and lost to Ames for a net NET score of 0 points. If we'd beaten Ames and lost to Quincy it would still be 0 points. In fact, come the end of the season, for a pair of home/away games the net score would be the same if you won one and lost one no matter which you won. One of these is easier to do but is less satisfying than the harder one.

Beating a Quad I at home  (+3.75) and losing to Quad III away (-2.75) for +1 is the same as losing to the Quad I (-0.75) and beating the Quad II (+1.75)

However this isn't necessarily true part way through the season as your win/loss could be enough to cause the other team to drop/gain a Quad place that session.

As far as NET rankings are concerned it is better to lose badly and win close games.

A bad loss might shift the other team up a Quad place giving you one more point and drop you a place giving all your opponents one less point. Wheras a good win could have the opposite effect giving youone less points as they drop a place. Close games are less likely to cause shifts in Quad places.

Next up  - "Side Out"

This one has been in my head for ages. Not many people here will know what Side Out means and it isn't used any more. 50 years ago when I played volleyball at school* you could only score when serving. If you didn't win the point and the serve changed hands it was a side out. The score didn't change. It isn't called that anymore but I'll stick with it here.

I mentioned to Al a while ago that I had a feeling that in TMVL more points were won when receiving than when serving. Al thought about having a stat with the percentage of Side outs.

I looked at my first 6 games 2 or 3 seasons ago working out the number of Side outs = total points minus service points (given in the match report) and 10 times it was true, the other two being a close game and a very one sided game. 

In games the home team always serves first in odd numbered sets. The advantage of receiving first is more than offset by the home bonuses. But in neutral games the team mentioned first (Baton Rouge in the first WGM game) is the away team so have a slight advantage from that.

One thing that surprised me was the number of Side outs for each team in a game was always close. It took a while for me to realise this was obvious - you serve until you lose the point, then they do, then you do. The number of Side outs is always going to be the same or one more to the team that received the first serve of the set.

The team that wins the set is the one who gets the most Serve points by scoring on serve or stopping the opposition getting them.

To get serve points you want great servers (makes theor pass harder so their Setter has a tougher job -> bad attacks), great blockers (to stop that ball coming over) and great defenders (in case it does).

To prevent them from getting serve points you want great  receivers, great setters and great attackers.

*At school we played in a small gym. We also had to play pretty statically with no specialist positions. The 3 at the back were receivers and tried to pass to the middle lad at the net for him to set to either attacker. Once I was in the II position and the serve (always underhanded) passed just over the net over me and they won the point. When he tried again I jumped up and blocked for the Side Out. "Good idea but let's try and play 3 hits."

I wasn't very athletic, though had good reflexes, and was one of the smallest of those that chose to play. Attacking and blocking were not good but I could serve on a sixpence. I was also a great receiver (the serves were never hit hard) and was never aced.

I used to think TL;DR was a dating site. I learnt what it meant earlier today.

Anything over half a dozen lines becomes TL;DR

I need learn nothing anyway as #wingingit is the way forward

Steve is of course right.  Side out or "siding out" is an archaic term that made more sense back in the day but everyone still uses it and it has great meaning.

If you are watching a great set you might see teams side out almost every point (essentially meaning teams only are winning points when they receive the serve).  The winning team in that set is the one that can string together a few points where they actually win them on their own serve.  

I would read and re-read this section from Steve as it tells you some key info and interaction of skills

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The team that wins the set is the one who gets the most Serve points by scoring on serve or stopping the opposition getting them.

To get serve points you want great servers (makes theor pass harder so their Setter has a tougher job -> bad attacks), great blockers (to stop that ball coming over) and great defenders (in case it does).

To prevent them from getting serve points you want great  receivers, great setters and great attackers.

----

Steve's description of his school volleyball I think is similar to mine.  Yes, there were no specific positions as such.  It just depended on where you were on the court.  

It was my favorite sport in PE (Physical Education) class as we'd have tournaments and it was a lot of fun.

Although I must say, unlike SL 20 RCV Steve, I'm pretty sure I was aced a few times!  😎

Great posts in this thread, thank you Steve!

I liked PE.

Didn't like running though. That's rubbish.

I'm like my Bulldogs - I will run all day to chase a ball. Any other running I replace with walking.

Cross country and the track were not my thing.

Football, rugby, cricket, badminton etc yes please.

Last one: this is mostly about rotation and players who are next to each other in the line-up. I'm going to call the players L, S, R, O, o, M and m. Should be obvious what they stand for - O is your better outside hitter depending on what I'm talking about at the time. Sorry, Craig, this is a long post.

Once you have picked your 7 players there are 144 ways to set up your team. Lets assume you put S at #1. There are 4 players who can play #2. If you put an outside hitter there then for #3 there is the choice either middle blocker so 2 choices for #3. The rest are then fixed. This means 8 possible lineups. But S can be in one of 6 positions so that makes it 48 possibilities. And finally for each of these there are 3 choices for L: not serving, serving for M or serving for m. In reality it's probably only 50 different combinations when you are serving because M or m won't be on court unless he's to serve and 48 when receiving because L is always on court.

Home team always serves first in the first set. For the away team the players will be rotated backwards. So if away team put S at #1 he will be on court at #2. This is so that when away yeam wins the point their players rotate and S is now at #1 to serve. Does it matter? Well yes. Home team will serve rotation#1 against rotation#6 first set. But away team will serve rotation#1 against rotation#1. In a lot of games I watch the sets play out differently. Against Cincin last Sunday we had a good 1st set, then a horrid 2nd set then a good 3rd set then a bad 4th set. I was quite hopeful for the 5th which ended up in a 13-15 loss but I bet we would have won if it went to 25. It doesn't happen all the time due to randomness but I do see it a lot.

Long post already so I'll do adjacent players later.