[M T]

As I said, I tried to find some statistic that could demonstrate the quality of Morgan Hentz.  I wondered if Hentz or Stanford made more digs that prevented kills, per opportunity to get a dig.   You could call this a dig percentage.   Blocks by teammates and attack errors by opponents  are factored out, as are the number of sets played,  or even the number of points played.

Unfortunately, I suspect the quality of teammates and opponents affect this number too much for it to be a good measure.  (However, it may be better than total digs or digs/set.)

From the stats, the best way to estimate balls that were eligible to be dug is
  Opponent Kills + Same team digs

For an individual, the best way is
  Opponent Kills + Same team digs -  the individual’s digs

Then compute the ratio of  digs/diggable_balls. Obviously no player has a real chance to get anywhere near all the diggable balls.  The wider a player’s range, the quicker she is, and the smarter she is about being in position should increase this ratio.  

Unfortunately, both the play of her teammates and opponents affect the ratio. If opponents are accurate and strong with their kills, the ratio will go down.  If the opponents hit slow attacks, the ratio goes up. If teammates are good diggers, the individual’s ratio will go down, and vice versa.


For individuals, you need these numbers for the sets in which the individual played. That’s easiest to get if she played in all sets.
Morgan Hentz has played in all 113 sets for Stanford. She’s had 539 digs, or 35.5% of 1518 total digs for Stanford.

Stanford:
 1518 digs / (1307 kills + 1518 digs) = 53.7%

Hentz:
 539 / (1307 + 1518 - 539)   =  23.6%

Stanford’s opponents:
  1404  /  (1693 +  1404)    = 45.3%

——-
The girl with the most digs/set in the NCAA is Kallie Seimet.
She played all 114 sets that her team played and had 768 digs in those sets. (768/2225  =  34.5% of her team’s digs)
Her opponents had  4655 attacks, of which 677 were errors,  and 1436 were kills.
Her team had 32 block errors.

It is no surprise that she had more digs/set when you see the number of attacks.

Team:
 2225/(1436+2225)        = 60.8%

Seimet:
 768/(1436+2225-768)     = 26.5%

So, both Seimet individually and her team dig a higher percentage of dig-able attacks than Hentz and Stanford.

———
The girl in either the PAC-12 or the Big 10 that played every set and had the highest digs/set was Jenna Lerg of Michigan.
She should have played against a similar quality of opponents, and had roughly similar quality of teammates.
Certainly Russ Rose would be familiar with her. Since she’s now a senior,  Hambly would likely be familiar with her too.
She had 594 of her team’s 1923 digs (30.9%)

Michigan:  
  1923/(1510 + 1923)     = 56.0%  (higher  than Stanford)
Lerg:
  594 /(1510 +1923-594)  = 20.9%  (lower than Hentz)
——-

Maybe, just maybe, this stat might be usable within a conference, between two similar quality teams.  But I think we simply have to depend on judgements of experts such as Hambly and Rose.

[M T]

As I said, I tried to find some statistic that could demonstrate the quality of Morgan Hentz.  I wondered if Hentz or Stanford made more digs that prevented kills, per opportunity to get a dig.   You could call this a dig percentage.   Blocks by teammates and attack errors by opponents  are factored out, as are the number of sets played,  or even the number of points played.

Unfortunately, I suspect the quality of teammates and opponents affect this number too much for it to be a good measure.  (However, it may be better than total digs or digs/set.)

From the stats, the best way to estimate balls that were eligible to be dug is
  Opponent Kills + Same team digs

For an individual, the best way is
  Opponent Kills + Same team digs -  the individual’s digs

Then compute the ratio of  digs/diggable_balls. Obviously no player has a real chance to get anywhere near all the diggable balls.  The wider a player’s range, the quicker she is, and the smarter she is about being in position should increase this ratio.  

Unfortunately, both the play of her teammates and opponents affect the ratio. If opponents are accurate and strong with their kills, the ratio will go down.  If the opponents hit slow attacks, the ratio goes up. If teammates are good diggers, the individual’s ratio will go down, and vice versa.


For individuals, you need these numbers for the sets in which the individual played. That’s easiest to get if she played in all sets.
Morgan Hentz has played in all 113 sets for Stanford. She’s had 539 digs, or 35.5% of 1518 total digs for Stanford.

Stanford:
 1518 digs / (1307 kills + 1518 digs) = 53.7%

Hentz:
 539 / (1307 + 1518 - 539)   =  23.6%

Stanford’s opponents:
  1404  /  (1693 +  1404)    = 45.3%

——-
The girl with the most digs/set in the NCAA is Kallie Seimet.
She played all 114 sets that her team played and had 768 digs in those sets. (768/2225  =  34.5% of her team’s digs)
Her opponents had  4655 attacks, of which 677 were errors,  and 1436 were kills.
Her team had 32 block errors.

It is no surprise that she had more digs/set when you see the number of attacks.

Team:
 2225/(1436+2225)        = 60.8%

Seimet:
 768/(1436+2225-768)     = 26.5%

So, both Seimet individually and her team dig a higher percentage of dig-able attacks than Hentz and Stanford.

———
The girl in either the PAC-12 or the Big 10 that played every set and had the highest digs/set was Jenna Lerg of Michigan.
She should have played against a similar quality of opponents, and had roughly similar quality of teammates.
Certainly Russ Rose would be familiar with her. Since she’s now a senior,  Hambly would likely be familiar with her too.
She had 594 of her team’s 1923 digs (30.9%)

Michigan:  
  1923/(1510 + 1923)     = 56.0%  (higher  than Stanford)
Lerg:
  594 /(1510 +1923-594)  = 20.9%  (lower than Hentz)
——-

Maybe, just maybe, this stat might be usable within a conference, between two similar quality teams.  But I think we simply have to depend on judgements of experts such as Hambly and Rose.