One of the few AI images that had a normal amount of panels on the volleyball. | DALL-E
As we ring in a new year, that also means we also get to welcome another NCAA Men’s Volleyball season. 2024 looks to be another exciting year as the sport continues to see growth both in the United States and around the world. The best news came late in the summer as the NCAA approved a (very slightly) expanded national tournament. The 8-team tournament this year is a step in the right direction, but there is still work to be done.
The first match of the 2024 season isn’t until tomorrow, so today let’s looks at some of the new faces to the volleyball landscape. Let’s not forget some changes to the VBelo model to simply some things and increase accuracy (win-win).
I can’t wait for the season to officially start and get that data flowing. If you want to follow the season from beginning to end, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.
For the third year in a row, we have a new conference in Men’s Volleyball! The East Coast Conference will become the 9th conference1 to sponsor the sport at the D-I/II level. Although they had planned to play their inaugural year with 5 teams, they will sadly play with only 4 this season. Those 4 teams will be composed of 1 returning team and 3 brand new programs (which is great news for the growth of the sport)!
American International College Yellow Jackets (previously IVA)
Dominican University Chargers
Roberts Wesleyan University Redhawks
St. Thomas Aquinas College Spartans
Welcome to the party, ECC!
4 New Programs!
That’s right, this season we are getting 4 new teams to cheer for. Three of them were already mentioned above as members of the new ECC. The final program to make the jump to D-II is Thomas More University. Their men’s volleyball programs has existed since 2019 in the NAIA but this will be their first year as a D-II program. They will be competing in the IVA with some great independent programs and they have the honor of hosting the 2024 IVA tournament on April 12 & 13.
Welcome to all 4 new teams!
Dominican University Chargers
Roberts Wesleyan University Redhawks
St. Thomas Aquinas College Spartans
Thomas More University Saints
Parting in Such Sweet Sorrow
Alliance University, Limestone University, Alderson Broaddus University, & St. Francis College Brooklyn.
Unfortunately, it’s not all growth and expansion in collegiate athletics these days. For most smaller colleges, keeping the doors open is at the forefront of their minds. Tuition can only go so far to keep these institutions going. For some, they make the difficult decision to cut specific athletic programs. This is exactly what happened to Limestone University back in April when they disbanded the Men’s Volleyball program.
Some schools have to take the even more drastic step to cut all athletic programs. This impacts a huge number of athletes, coaches, staff, and fans. This was the unfortunate fate at St. Francis Brooklyn.
The hardest news of all to take is the most drastic option: closing the school. For two programs this is what happened in the off-season. Alderson Broaddus, former member of the IVA, closed its doors this summer. This is sad for the athletes but also for every person connected to the institution from the administration to the janitorial staff to countless alumni.
Alliance University also closed its doors this summer. They were slated to have their first men’s volleyball season this year. Sadly, we will never get a chance to cheer on the Alliance Warriors on the court.
These four teams will be missed dearly. Since one of the teams didn’t compete last year, there will be a net change of +1 team this year compared to last season. This year, we will have 58 teams competing at the D-I/II level.
Changes to VBelo
Let’s get to some nerdy stuff! Every year, I try to see if I can make some changes to the VBelo model to improve it. For 2024, there are two main updates.
First, I am taking out the personnel retention calculation. Last season, I introduced a calculation to estimate how much of a team’s talent is retained from the previous year. It involved looking at how many matches and sets each player played and if they returned to the same team the next year. Long story short, it turns out it didn’t make a huge difference. In fact for last season, it made the model ever so slightly worse. (That is just how it goes sometimes.) This calculation has now been removed from VBelo. This makes the model slightly more accurate and slightly less complicated. Two things I very much want for the model.
Second, I changed up some of the constants that feed the elo model. Specifically, I increased the K value from 30 to 60. This will have a significant impact on Vbelo! In short, each match will cause more elo points to be gained and lost. This will increase the highest VBelo ratings and decrease the lowest ratings. By creating more variance in the model, I saw a pretty significant increase in accuracy.
Below is a comparison to the 2023 version of VBelo to the new and improved 2024 version. In an ideal world, we would want to see the groupings appear in a linear fashion. For example, this would essentially mean that teams with a 70% chances of winning a match would win about 70% of the time. On the right, you can visually see the improvements when running last season’s numbers through the model. The closer the quantiles are to the line, the closer the predictions are to actual results.
In terms of measuring the difference, I tend to look as Mean Squared Error. This measures the difference between the expected value (who is likely to win) and the actual value (who actually won). Here is how last year’s version compares to this years:
2023 version: 0.1662
2024 version: 0.1566
This is a 5.8% decrease which is pretty good for these small of values. All of these numbers are great an all, but the real test is seeing how these same values look at the end of the season. Only time will tell but I am excited to see what time says (regardless of the the outcome).
Northern Exposure: Canadian Exhibition Matches
In a surprise to no one who has checked the weather in Calgary lately, several Canadian teams made the trek down to Southern California for some friendly exhibition matches. The Canadian teams are in the middle of their very long season so this is more of a “spring” break for them. While these matches don’t count towards teams’ records, it is great to see international off-season matches. Volleyball is growing in popularity all over the world, so I wouldn’t be shocked if we see more and more of these types of pre-season matchups in the near future.2
December 30, 2023
Pepperdinedef. British Columbia 3-0 (25-20, 30-28, 28-26)
UCSDdef. Calgary 3-1 (25-20, 23-25, 25-18, 25-22)
Sidenote: Calgary wins for best mascot and logo. I will not be taking any questions.
December 31, 2023
Long Beachdef. Alberta 4-0 (26-24, 25-21, 28-26, 25-18)
Long Beachdef. Alberta 3-0 (25-12, 25-15, 25-22)
To Another Year!
On the eve of another NCAA Men’s Volleyball, I want to take a brief moment to thank you all for reading the VBelo Report. I am still trying to figure out what type of coverage the VBelo Report will be able to provide this year. What I do know is that volleyball is a fantastic sport and the additional attention it has been getting is fantastic.
The mission of the VBelo Report is pretty simple: to help grow the game of volleyball (and use numbers when possible). Thankyou for being interested in this mission. Here’s to a great season!
W00t! Your model changes sound great. I love the graphs!
As per usual, great work by you. Happy New Year