What’s in the VBelo Report?
Every matchday during the NCAA Men’s Volleyball season (January-early May), you will receive a daily newsletter with loads match information, scores from the previous day, and news from around the league. You might be a new fan to men’s volleyball or a seasoned veteran; regardless there is a little something for everyone.
Daily Recaps
With so many matches and teams to follow, you will get a nice update on matches played the day before like who won, what the set scores were, and how it might affect their VBelo rating.
Match Previews
You also get a daily preview of matches being played that day along with their VBelo probabilities for winning. You will know which games could be close and what underdogs you can root for.
News and Stats
You will also get some interesting news and stats from around the league. There is a lot of cover so one newsletter can’t capture it all, but it’s a good start. Maybe you have wondered thing like: What is happening with transfers? How well are home teams doing? Who has the strongest schedule? When is the NCAA committee going to expand the tournament? If you have (or want to), then you are in the right place.
What even is elo?
If we were talking about ELO, it would be the iconic Electric Light Orchestra. But we’re not talking about that ELO.
Elo is a rating system developed in the mid 1900s to measure the relative strength of competitors in a zero-sum game. The first (and still most popular) use is the ratings given to professional chess players.
If you are familiar with the sports modeling that was done over at FiveThirtyEight (RIP), then you have seen elo models in action. (If you haven’t checked out their sports stuff, I highly recommend checking out the archives.)
But what about VBelo?
VBelo uses the basic elo model and then adds adjustments for NCAA Men’s Volleyball. It takes into account home court advantage, distance traveled, margin of victory, and more! This produces a rating for each team. The difference in ratings between opponents allows VBelo to give both teams a probability of winning.
It is a great way of measuring the relative strength of teams, especially teams in different conferences that don’t play each other very often.
The probabilities for each match are a good indicator of what matchups could be highly competitive and where upsets are more meaningful.
Like any statistical model, it is not perfect. But it does give a really good picture of the landscape of NCAA Men’s Volleyball. It is an exciting way for data to help #GrowTheGame.
