Not much of a review, more of some general comments...

Fatigue

Pierre asked about fatigue in the game.  As James White responded, there's really just the fitness modifier for the entire match, but not really anything where players get tired and perform worse by design later in a match.

There are  many different possibilities on a point.  Sometimes a situation (who is in the front row or back row; or serving?) can present a better/worse outcome for one team or another and they get momentum.  One of the stats you'll see in the boxscore is attacking percentage by set.  Does it tell you who will win the set (based on the higher attacking percentage)?  Most of the time it does but not always.  For example here's a Mendon-Manitowoc match:

Here are a couple of Max's team (Augustana) matches on Wednesday:

Augustana looked like they'd run away with the match after the first set.  But Concordia hung on in the 2nd set, won the 4th set and forced a 5th set where they won.

Attacking percentage for the day was even at .154 for both teams.  

Augustana hit .600 in the 1st set,  but Baldwin Wallace reversed that in set 2.

Augustana won the 3rd with a better attacking percentage but look at the 4th.

What you don't see here is that Augustana was up in the 4th set 24-18.  Baldwin Wallace hung in there and tied it and eventually won that set.

In the 5th BW WAY outhit Augustana.  From the numbers above BW had 8 points on kills and 4 more on our errors for 12 points.

Augustana had 6 points on kills and 2 more for BW errors for 8.  So we're at 12-8 for the other team.

But what also happened is we had 2 aces 12-10.  They had 4 service errors 12-14.  We had a rotation error 13-14.  They had a setting error 13-15.  

I'm not sure what my overall point was here, just that...anything can happen and hitting percentage is often a predictor of winning, but don't forget other aspects including serving (good or bad).

Those 3-star Recruits

While commenting on the out of character James Tucker 3-star signing last week Rob noted:

I'm always intrigued by folks who go after 3* recruits. How to they pan out, numbers-wise, to the average 4* recruit. Anyone run the numbers? 

I have not run any numbers.  But looking at a few from last year and their potential this year they fit in the B- to B+ range.  I'd say more so on the B- to B side of things on average.

The big deal here though is that in the Competitive Recruiting phase ALL the 3-star players get a specialty bonus (whether its maxing out ATK for example or up to Max +2 on SRV).

That sort of guarantees them a higher SL in a skill and it seems to pay off.  

Recruit Names

If you really need to (slightly) modify a recruit or come up with a walkon name I can do one a season per team if I approve the name.  Nothing too weird and don't wear me out.

Daniel DeLuca is now (sigh) Daniel DeGoodprice (you are welcome John).

Website Caching

Whenever you see a page not loading properly please do two things:

1) Try the same page in another browser

2) Email me a screenshot of the page you are seeing an issue with (and the link you used to get here if possible)

As I've mentioned in the past there are "caching-gremlins" that torment me from time to time.  I really have no solution other than changing the PHP version and rebooting the webserve and that's not ideal.  I've invested many hours trying to solve it.

Rob did note one page was missing a related file and fixing that helped on one page, but it was not the fix for the scoreboard page that many pointed out today sadly.  So please just follow the above and I will help.

I'm in a Tournament // What Does it Mean // Where Am I?

Occasionally some coaches will note:

- what is this tournament?

- what is the format?

- where am I (I'm making this one up)

And I get it.  My first attempt was to build brackets and that took time.   But you can see them now with the WGM Cup, National Championship, and Holyoke.  I need to add them for TMVL Cup/Shield and Conference Tournaments

What I'd like some help with is doing write ups for each tournament to better explain WHAT each tournament is about, how it works, what phase we are in, next steps, etc.

Now that our "match numbers" are pretty stable I think we can put something helpful together that shouldn't change much.

We can also then use things like the scoreboard/match previews/etc to LINK TO these writeups so all coaches feel like they have a quick path to see more about the competition and where they are in it.

Can 2-3 of you help me with some write ups.  I will collaborate with you and verify things (or answer questions) but then we'll put them on a page on the site and link to them.  That's the general idea.  By collaborating you may have additional ideas to make that better.

Streakers

Some teams are on winning streaks.  This section of the post, which includes all teams, is totally accurate, and is "by no means" a "kiss of death" scenario as certain cynical folk might say:

CINCI - 8 Matches // Senator Mike - 4 matches

Oh and ask me what Senator Mike said to Kelsey, Max, and me before he left a recent Augustana match.  

Rob -  I'm 8-4 but never win anything, please feel bad for me - 3 matches

Craig - Every word the commish writes is a conspiracy theory for me - 5...wow FIVE matches

Thanks for reading....