It is always a wonderful day when the All-Conference teams get announced. We get to see all of the cool graphics that the creative content divisions come up with to honor athletes at their school. My social media pages get flooded with pictures of the honorees and lists of their superlatives. I love scrolling through and seeing all the recognition. Through my years at SFA, I've been able to be physically present several times when our coaching staff has informed our players of their honors. That's always a really special moment to see their faces light up and the team cheer for them in the gym or on the bus or in a meeting room.
This year the official lists were released while I was driving my super duper rental car somewhere across I-10 headed for Hammond. Once I got to my hotel here in the host city, the first thing I did after checking in and unpacking was gaze at the official all-conference lists.
Let's dive in and compare the Official Southland Conference All- SLC lists to those that I posted yesterday morning before the official announcements.
In general there are a lot of similarities. Indeed, the conference and I agree on 11 of the 14 players honored on the first team and 16 of 21 players honored overall. That doesn't leave a large space of room for difference of opinions, but there are a few things worth mentioning I feel. Some of the points being made here are philosophical on my end and they are things that I repeat pretty much every year. There are just certain methods and philosophies that I have adopted that not all coaches and SID's will incorporate in the same way.
That isn't to say that my way is "right" and others' ways are "wrong". I don't think that is my place to argue anymore. I really value statistical analysis is making my choices. After all, my real job is in the mathematical sciences and that's what I truly do for a living. I am literally paid to analyze data, teach people how to analyze data and solve problems with data.
So, the numbers are always going to be primary. Not everyone is numerically driven and so that's a philosophical difference in player evaluation. To that end, that's why I always use ALL relevant data and I firmly believe that you should use FULL season stats in making these picks. That's my first premise:
- Data should not be omitted from analysis unless it is irrelevant. Non-conference data is not irrelevant. Using it can help you identify player progression and trends. It can help you determine which players have found and lost roles. It's information about the quality of the player and your goal should be to pick the best players. The argument against this is strength of schedule differences across the 12 teams. My counterargument to that is very simple: You shouldn't vote if you aren't willing to be intentional about adjusting for such. To simply say that we will throw a dozen matches of statistics out of our consideration for every player to make it "even" is actually the lazy way out. Use all the data. Make your adjustments. Invest in reasonable ways to adjust for differing non-conference schedules.
- India Bennett of SLU is 8th in the nation in blocks per set and 14th in total blocks. She leads the SLC in blocks per set at 1.49. To me, that is worthy of a 1st team honor. Now, for full disclosure, I am guilty of the very point I am making concerning Alex Hoglund, the setter for Texas A&M - Corpus Christi. Hoglund is 8th in the nation in assists per set. Bennett was on the official 2nd team. Hoglund was on my personal second team. Now, I'll be honest, I put more stock in blocks/set as a statistic for MB's than I do assists per set for setters. But again, I'm trying to be perfectly fair in pointing out what could have been my own oversight.
- Jade Smith, the libero for East Texas A&M, has amassed 5.40 digs per set. East Texas A&M's team and player ranks do not populate on the NCAA D1 Volleyball website due to the program not being fully transitioned (yet) and not eligible for NCAA post-season play. However, Smith's value would rank her 5th in the nation. Again, I fully understand that the measure of a libero is not exclusively in one metric. That has been pointed out to me many times. I get it. However, I'd argue that we make ourselves look - at a minimum out of touch - and at a maximum foolish when we ignore players completely that are on national leaderboards. Also, please don't cite me opponent/schedule issues in this case. East Texas A&M played all of East Carolina, TCU, UCLA, Houston and Ole Miss prior to conference play. That's more than a respectable schedule. They played three Top 50 RPI matches which is as many as SLU and SFA did. Their strength of schedule at FigStats ranks 5th in the SLC. Smith put up her numbers against quality teams for a full season. It isn't right to COMPLETELY ignore her on all-conference lists. We need to be more aware of national leaders from our conference.
- Alexis Logarbo of SLU is one of the top right side hitters in the conference in my opinion. She was third among all RS's in attack percentage and led all in total blocks with 77. If you want to argue that Logarbo gets a lot of block assists because she closes with SLU's middles, then why are we not honoring SLU's middles? That seems like a circular argument to me. I'll be bold enough to say that I think only SFA's Katherine Holtman has had a clearly better performance at right side across the conference. There are some RS's that had better kill and kill per set numbers than Logarbo (e.g., De Assis, Allison [S/RS]), but those players had attack percentages and block numbers significantly worse than Logarbo. It works both ways.
- As you might expect, I like my 2nd team more than the official lists. I've already argued for Smith and SLU's middles and implicitly I've argued for Castro and Benjamin as being snubbed for their team rather than their numbers. The Tillman and Zech (I'm actually a big Zech fan) picks I am OK with because they made my "just missed" list.
- For what it's worth, I was dead on with my statement in the original post about the player most likely to be included on the official lists that I left off. Again, I just respectfully, believe that we should expect the highest honored middle BLOCKERS to have statistically significant blocking statistics.
- I believe the voters got it exactly right regarding SFA. Of course, that's the team I know best and where my loyalty will always lie. That said, a team that goes undefeated in conference play and wins 24 matches in a row deserves more than one player on the first team. Especially when we are honoring 14 players on the first team. Frankly, I think that is difficult to justify under any philosophical difference of player evaluation.
- Last year in the WAC, the two top teams were SFA and Grand Canyon. Each of those teams had three players among the top 16 vote getters. I'm willing to think I should have reconsidered on Hoglund at AMCC. Maybe I made a mistake there. Fair enough. However, I'd have been really disappointed last season if Ielan Bradley won WAC player of the Year and she was our only first team honoree among the Top 14. If Logarbo gets on a list and one of Bennett/McKelvey slides up, then this is all more plateable. Above, I've made my case for that being Bennett.