Behind the Laptop: Week 1 and Week 2

Non-Conference: So Much to Do

If you’re interested in watching any of our matches, all of them (except at Colorado State) are on ESPN+

As I write this, my team is in the middle of week two of four weeks of non-conference play. These weeks are busier than the average conference play weeks, mostly because we typically play three matches each weekend instead of two. Last weekend, we traveled to Denton, Texas, the home of the North Texas Mean Green, for matches against our host, Miami (FL), and Rutgers. We went 2-1 but it never felt like we played well. I’d write more about those matches but the preparation and scouting was less than usual because it’s always hard to predict what a team will look like with no recent matches to study. But there was plenty going on so I’ll recount a bit of it.

Thursday, 8/29
We left Boulder before 8am, which is earlier than most trips we take, but flight times don’t always work out in your favor. The flight to DFW was easy and we were on our way from the airport to Denton in short order. After checking into our hotel, I went to the grocery store with our Director of Operations so we could buy snacks for the players to keep in their hotel rooms over the weekend. We’re fortunate that our athletic department makes funds available to feed the student-athletes as much as possible. That’s good because they eat. Often and a lot. We practiced that evening for about 90 minutes, which is always our routine when we are on the road. Much of these practices is intended to get accustomed to the surroundings we’ll be in but there’s often a scouting aspect to these practices as well. During non-conference weekends, however, there’s less of that.

Friday, 8/30
As is our custom on match days, we start the day with breakfast before a 60-minute practice. We generally have a few hours of down time after that practice before our match. I took advantage of that time to get out of the hotel for a walk; I knew that it would be about the last chunk of time this season that I wouldn’t feel like I needed to be working on something. By mid-afternoon, it was time to head to the gym for scouting. During non-conference weekends, there are generally two matches played so teams will usually scout their upcoming opponents in one match and play in the other match. For the CU staff, that meant watching Miami play Rutgers before our match against North Texas. My job during these matches is to record video for later analysis.

We were able to squeak past UNT in five sets in the evening match. I’m not going to get into any detail about these matches, mostly because they happened a week ago and my mind is full of this weekend’s matches, but also because it’s a long season and I’ll have time to dig into stats, analysis, and other observations in the future. For now, I’ll focus on the daily schedule so I don’t have to explain that as much in the future.

Saturday, 8/31
One of my least-favorite aspects of non-conference is the first weekend of play. While it is exciting to get to compete, I dislike how much preparation we have to fit into a small time frame. Since we don’t have any recent information on the first weekend’s opponents, we rely mostly on what happens during the first weekend. That means that our associate head coach and I were up late on Friday night preparing the Miami scouting report. I don’t enjoy the late hours, but I feel a little bit better when I go to bed knowing that we’ve finished the job. But still, the next morning comes too quickly. The day starts almost the same as Friday, breakfast and practice but we have a scout film session before we leave for the gym. Our associate head coach presented the scout information that we worked on the previous night while I show the video clips that he selected to highlight the scouting points he wants to make. We played the earlier of the day’s two matches, so not as much free time after practice as there was on Friday. I managed to get some personal time, which will pay some dividends in a few months.

I have a couple of friends that graduated from UNT so I had asked them for recommendations to feed our team while in Denton. Along with a few restaurants, they also mentioned a used book and music store that they loved, Recycled Books and Music so I made it a point to visit because I love to see what I can find by browsing the shelves. I also love getting out of my hotel when I can. So right after we came back from practice, I packed my stuff for scouting and our match and headed right back out the door to Recycled. The shop feels exactly the way I want a used book to feel, worn but comfortable and functional.

If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you may have gathered that I like to read stuff in a few different areas of interest. For instance, I recently finished an academic text on professional coaching and immediately moved on to a book on game theory. Towards the latter end of that spectrum, Nate Silver recently released a new book, On the Edge, and I was hoping that, somehow, a brand new book would miraculously appear at a used book store. I explored all the areas in the store but it wasn’t until I discovered there was a downstairs area that my hope was realized. I didn’t find anything else of interest on this trip, but I did find that book, hiding on one of the last shelves that I wanted to peruse. I’m excited to read the book because I’ve been thinking about risk a lot lately as I prepare for my presentation at the upcoming AVCA convention. The book is thick but it reads pretty easily. I had to put it aside so I could finish the books I currently have lined up, but I’ll get it done before the season is over.

Recycled is located in downtown Denton, a short distance from the UNT campus, so I picked up a sandwich and walked to the gym just in time to meet our team for our serve/pass session prior to our match against Miami. This match did not go well for us and it also ended quickly, which might be the only redeeming aspect of it. Ending early gave me enough time to get the match video onto my laptop, sync that video with my match code, and get some quick cleaning up of the code done before shifting focus back to preparing for our remaining match against Rutgers. After the match ended, it was back to the hotel for a second round of scouting report preparation. Since we were able to start working earlier than the previous night, we were able to get to sleep a little earlier as well.

Sunday, 9/1
The day started with breakfast and film again, but also packing, since we would not be returning to the hotel again. Like Saturday afternoon, we have a 30 minute serve/pass session prior to match warmups and we played Rutgers at noon. Whatever Miami did to us on Saturday evening, that’s close to what we did to Rutgers on Sunday. It’s kind of nice when matches are over quickly because that means there’s less video and code to go through and slightly more time in which to do the work. Additionally, we had received word prior to our match that our flight had already been delayed an hour, so I knew I would get a little more time to work at the airport, even though it would mean getting home a little later.

Once we checked in and made our way to our gate, I found a table near an outlet so I could get busy working. With our weekend’s matches over, I have two main work concerns, getting my video and stats posted for players and coaches and starting my scouting work for the next set of opponents. Time at the airport typically allows me to do both. The airport wifi was amazingly fast for public wifi so I was able to upload my video and code from the Rutgers match as well as download the available video for Georgia, Fresno State, and Washington. We ended up getting even more time than we bargained for, as some bad weather rolled through, eventually delaying our flight for a total of four hours, about an hour of which was spent on the plane. During the actual flight, I prepared the scout video for our associate head coach so I could upload it for him on Monday morning.

Monday, 9/2
The day after our last weekend match is typically a day off, meaning that there are no mandatory team activities for the players (CARA and RARA for the NCAA compliance-curious). While they’re being closer-to-normal college students for a day, the staff is beginning preparations for the next matches. For me, that means downloading lots of scout files and videos from Volley Metrics. While my primary focus is on the teams we will face in a few days, I am also downloading scout files of all our future non-conference and Big 12 opponents. While it gives me more work to do in the near term, it means that I can always be aware of how those future opponents are doing if needed. During the non-conference portion of the season, there are a lot of matches being played, so the process of downloading and processing the video and data can take hours. Processing the scout data is time consuming but I remind myself that, in data science, data wrangling usually takes much longer than data analysis. In order to keep things neat and orderly, I standardize a lot of data so it all makes sense when I look at it together or if I want to partition it in different ways. Part of processing the data for me is using R and Tableau, applications which help me manage and present much larger amounts of data easily. I rely on those two so that I can produce information in much more digestible formats for the coaches. But they aren’t substitutes for video analysis.

As I mentioned above, I provide video for our associate head coach, who is in charge of opponent scouting. In addition to the video, I also provide him with roster information, potential lineups, and relevant stats. He’ll use these to supplement his video analysis when he creates our scouting reports. We also have conversations about what we saw in the video and data to make sure that we’re understanding what we’re seeing.

But our video analysis isn’t solely focused outward. Before he begins watching video of upcoming opponents, he’ll watch video of our matches from the previous weekend so that we can create a montage of clips to be watched before our first practice of the week. Before he watches that video, I’ll review my code from the matches and clean it up, fixing errors and omissions and making small adjustments to things that I couldn’t see clearly from the bench during the match.

Tuesday, 9/3
The second day of the week is mostly a continuation of the day before; I’m still working on scouting for the coming matches. Part of this process is making new versions of existing analysis spreadsheets. I have some sheets that I customize for each opponent we play so I create new versions after I have a good idea of who I think will play against us. At some point in the morning (and each practice day), our head coach will send out the practice plan for that afternoon and I’ll review it to make sure that I set up all video needs accordingly. As I mentioned previously, we will watch video of our previous matches at the beginning of practice so I also have to prepare that video in the morning as well.

Typically, I pack my lunch each day but this Tuesday was an exception. Last school year, I connected with a professor in CU’s philosophy department who teaches and studies in areas that I am very interested in. Instead of my usual lunch, I met him for lunch so we could discuss some ideas in game theory and decision making as they apply to volleyball. He’s very knowledgeable and has a background in sport, so he understands what I’m after, even if he doesn’t understand volleyball at a high level. He’s also very engaging and easy to talk to so time and ideas fly when we get together. I’m looking forward to seeing him a few more times this fall, as our schedules allow.

Once lunch has come and gone on any practice day, there’s only a little bit of time left to get more work done before practice and there’s still more than enough work to be done. I’ve done this enough that I know, no matter how it might feel on Tuesday afternoon, I will have the time I need to finish everything on time. Our first practice of a normal week will be more about skill training than preparing for matches. As a result, I’ll still have coding to do but we won’t spend as much time in 6v6 situations as we will later in the week. None the less, after practice, there is always video to be uploaded so players and coaches can watch before the next day’s practice.

Wednesday, 9/4
I still have one last scouting task to finish, making montages of the opposing teams’ setters. I finished this task off on Wednesday. Beyond that, it was a typical Wednesday of cleaning code, having small conversations about scouting or stats, followed by practice and making practice video available.

Thursday, 9/5
When we’re hosting weekend matches, Thursdays flow similarly to Wednesdays but I had a couple of atypical things going on this week. One of the things I love about the time around competition is the opportunity to see friends that coach elsewhere. This Thursday, I had coffee with a friend of mine that coaches at a school that we would play over the weekend. She’s a wonderful human and I love the chance to talk to her whenever I can.

The other fun thing I did was pitch a research idea to a data science class. Our school’s engineering department has a data science track and they offer a capstone class, in which students will spend the semester working with real-life data and stakeholders to answer research questions. I am one of four people that presented research ideas and, based on student interests, I and the others are assigned to a group of 3-5 students that we will collaborate with for the semester. My group will be working with me on how to measure and classify player improvement over time. I’m looking forward to the project.

One thing that happens before five of our home matches is a “chalk talk” with our head coach, open to the public and regularly attended by many of our long-time boosters and fans. The first of those talks took place on Friday so the head coach spends time during the week preparing his presentation and usually asks me for video clips to include. As a result, I spent some time taking care of that video for him in the afternoon.

When we play a match on Friday, we watch video before practice that Thursday. This video session is the culmination of the scout work that the associate head coach and I have been doing earlier in the week, just like when we were in Denton. After the video session, practice will be centered on walking through the opponent’s expected rotations and tendencies.

Friday, 9/6
We had a recruit come to campus on an official visit this weekend so the first order of business for me on Friday was to pick her and her father up at the airport and bring them to campus. Beyond small things like picking them up at the airport, I have very little recruiting responsibilities at CU. My job is classified by the NCAA as a Non-Coaching Staff Member (NCSM for the compliance nerds), which means my involvement in recruiting is limited in many ways, mostly around off-campus recruiting, but our staff has been at this a long time and doesn’t need much help from me, even when the recruiting is on-campus.

The rest of Friday is spent cleaning scout code and taking care of little administrative tasks until the neutral match before ours. As the host team, we are responsible for video recording and upload to Volley Metrics for all matches, not just our own. As a result, I am responsible for making sure we have good video and then uploading the scoresheets after the match is over so that Volley Metrics will analyze the match. Once the match is over, it’s our turn.

We had a battle with Georgia and prevailed in 5 sets. It was a fun match to watch and it was engaging to be on the bench. But it also meant a late night afterwards. Just like the previous weekend, there’s video to be uploaded, code to be cleaned, and another opponent to get ready for. As opposed to the first weekend however, the scouting report for Fresno State is already done and the coaches confirmed that the team did what we expected them to during their match against Washington. Still, there are things that need to be prepared before calling it a day.

Saturday, 9/7
The day began with video scout and a light practice, in which we walked through Fresno State’s rotations and tendencies. In these walk throughs, I bring a tv court-side and we re-watch each rotation immediately before going out and playing against our scout team. It’s a fun way to keep the mental connection to the actual team we’re about to play.

After that, it was back to administrative tasks and handling video needs for the neutral match before ours again. Washington and Georgia played five sets, so our match was delayed by a few minutes but not too much because we have practice gyms in our arena so both teams were able to warm up and ball handle elsewhere.

We swept Fresno State and, since the match started an hour earlier than Friday, I was able to finish my game day duties much earlier than Friday night. But the process was roughly the same as it was that night. I upload video, clean code, and update stats before I leave the office for the night.

Sunday, 9/8
Since matches are earlier in the day to accommodate teams traveling back home, there’s no morning practice, just a video session followed by pregame meal and a neutral match. As I write this, Georgia and Fresno State are tied at a set apiece and I need to get back to cleaning code and preparing for next week’s opponents.

Hopefully, in future installments, I can get into more detail about what I’m actually looking at and how it influences my views on opponents, as well as discussing how some of our tactical decisions played out. Until then, just know that I’m probably in front of my laptop.