Top 10 Bad Boys (and Girls) of Beach Volleyball

Beach Volleyball has a different kind of vibe than the respectful, hushed crowds of tennis or golf. Smack talk, intimidation, flexing, and gamesmanship are fairly common. But how can we quantify the biggest, baddest players of the game? While not perfect, I judged “bad boys” and “bad girls” based on illegal actions called by referees. This “% Faults” ratio identifies the likelihood that on any given point a player might commit an illegal action which is called by the referee.

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Battle of the Sexes: Top 3 Differences in Beach Volleyball

Like me, you probably watched the latest Beach Volleyball tournaments and the epic race to qualify for the Olympics. You probably just loved watching volleyball. But I was excited about something else. I couldn’t wait to analyze a new batch of data. The FIVB doesn’t report out match stats like the AVP, so I gathered a new point-by-point dataset from past FIVB tournaments. In my first analysis, I examine the shot selection differences between men and women.

tl;dr

1. The women’s game is more “crafty” than the men’s game. Women do more

Road to Hawaii – AVP Beach Volleyball Stat Trends

With the AVP Hawaii Open starting September 20th, I used my match database to examine recent player stat trends. The analysis covers all players currently scheduled to play in the tournament.

What’s the purpose of this visualization?

The intent is that players, coaches, fans, and commentators can see how different players have progressed over the last 2 years leading up to the Hawaii Open.

Players and coaches can specifically make adjustments to focus on key underperforming areas. They can also study their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses to make adjustments.

Introducing Beach Volleyball Match Charting

With the AVP Seattle Open underway, I thought it might be a fun exercise to chart a professional beach volleyball match. The process of collecting the data is manual but I wanted recreate the AVP match stats that are published online to test their validity. In addition, I track shot type and direction, which adds a whole new dimension to analyzing player tendencies.

I watched yesterday’s quarterfinal match-up of Chase Budinger/Casey Patterson vs. Tim Bomgren/Troy Field. Here was my setup during charting:

2019 AVP Season Data Primer, Player Trends, and More

Beach Volleyball Data

With the AVP season just around the corner (Huntington Beach on May 3-5), I thought it would be a good time to refresh the beach volleyball match database

The database now contains matches from the year 2000 all the way until April 6th, 2019.

Let’s examine some recent trends with the data update!

AVP & FIVB Beach Volleyball Match Database

Welcome to BigTimeStats, the TenniStats rebrand, now with beach volleyball match data. Drawing inspiration from Jeff Sackmann’s tennis match database, I’ve compiled all AVP and FIVB matches going back to year 2000, available as open source csv/excel files on Github.