Posted by Tagged Volleyball Analytics, Volleyball Statistics, Plus Liga, Science Untangled, 2020-21 Plus Liga
The Athletes Unlimited organisation recently started what they call a professional league in the United States. The significance of this league is that it does not have teams, but is structured so that an individual will be the ultimate. We can discuss and debate this but some other time and place. What interests me is who would win if we applied the scoring system to other leagues. If you click here you can see exactly how they score, but in short points won in attack, serve and block each have individual values, together with assists (sets that lead to an attack point), digs and good receptions. Points are lost for errors, including reception errors (which obviously I disagree with), but not for net touches (which is weird). So who would win in we applied those points to the current Plus Liga season? Luckily, I have Ben Raymond in my life who made a little app, which if you have your own data files you can try out the app here.
Before I get to the list, I need to explain a couple of points. The main one is that the Athletes Unlimited ‘league’ is organised so that everyone plays exactly the same number of sets, to be fair. Obviously, a normal league does not, so we have had to adjust the actual points won. The following list is only the individual point winners. To calculate the final winner, team victories and MVP awards are also counted. I will publish that one tomorrow. To repeat, the following is the INDIVIDUAL POINT table. It is NOT the final winner. Here it is:
| RANK | PLAYER | ADJUSTED POINTS |
| 1 | Karol Butryn | 2943.41 |
| 2 | Bartłomiej Bołądź | 2655.56 |
| 3 | Ronald Jimenez | 2559.33 |
| 4 | Mateusz Malinowski | 2510.23 |
| 5 | Kamil Semeniuk | 2429.06 |
| 6 | Bartłomiej Lipiński | 2325.41 |
| 7 | Aleksander Śliwka | 2205.02 |
| 8 | Rafał Faryna | 2167.24 |
| 9 | Klemen Čebulj | 2154.65 |
| 10 | Tomas Rousseaux | 2075.62 |
The first thing we have to notice is that the scoring system is heavily biased towards opposites, and then outside hitters. If the object of the scoring system is to find the best player, then it implies that the best player is the best opposite. The second thing we notice is how closely this list resembles the list of best scorers. It is a bit different because it takes into account that some teams play more than others, but it is pretty close.
There you have it. Karol Butryn was the best individual scorer in the 2020-21 PlusLiga season.
But who won? You will have to wait until tomorrow find out.
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