Statistical analysis of the 2018 tournament teams

So, HuskerGeek from VT created a spreadsheet analyzing all the top teams in the 2018 tournament. The most important part is at the very bottom, if you're not into reading all the geeky stuff in the middle of this post.

So, late last year I added a couple of items to my website which were meant to identify how far any team had the potential to go come tournament time. Those items were the tentatively named Grey Ink and Black Ink tests available on each Division 1 Teams page. These tests were derived by using the historical data I had in my database and the myriad of percentage statistics I calculate to develop historical baselines for each level of the tournament. I decided to only use teams that reached at least the second weekend because there is very little correlation to result before then. Each statistics is adjusted for opponent strength throughout the season and normalized to division average. In other words, Hitting Percentage is normalized around the D1 average of around .202.

Grey Ink: Tests the five "Core" categories which were the five categories which showed by far the most correlation with team success. This test has stricter boundaries than Black Ink does and is the first test I look at personally.

Hitting Margin: (Adjusted Hitting - Opponent Adjust Hitting)
Hitting Percentage
Opponent Hitting Percentage
Service Point Percentage
Sideout Percentage

Black Ink: Loosens the boundaries, but adds in the other 12 percentages that I calculate for offense and defense. Each statistic is calculated for a team and its opponents.

Kill Percentage
Assist Percentage
Error Percentage
Ace Percentage
Block Percentage
Dig Percentage

With each test, a team needs to pass every category to be considered as passing the test.

The link to the spreadsheet is (contains 2 pages): 

Read more: volleytalk.proboards.com/thread/75801/breaking-bracket-using-opponent-adjusted?page=1#ixzz5Y62HLDa3

Penn State: The Nittany Lions slide comfortably into the Final Four section of the ratings with championship levels of Offense and Defensive Hitting Percentage. Kendall White and the rest of the Penn State back row lines up as the best serve reception team in country this year after adjusting for opponent serve. That might be offset though as they rank just inside the top 100 at serving aces themselves landing at number ninety-nine.