Comparative analysis of serve and serve reception performance in pool B of European Men’s Volleyball Championship 2015

The aim of the study was to analyse the successfulness of tactics of serve and serve reception of the national teams who participated in Pool B of European Men’s Volleyball Championship in 2015.The study included four national teams: Estonia, France, Croatia and Italy. A total of six games and 912 serves were analysed.Data were collected using the statistics program Data Volley 2007. The data were transferred to Microsoft Excel 2010, which was used for data analysis. Additional statistical analysis was performed using the program SPSS Statistics 21.For jump float serve, the most preferable service zone was zone 5. The serves from this zone were also the most dangerous. For power jump serve, the most preferable service zone was zone 1. From this zone the smallest number of faults were made at power jump serve, but also the smallest number of ace serves and serves after which the opponent could not use all attack combinations were performed.Substitute players who came game only to perform serves showed the same efficiency in jump float serve as starting players. Among the performers of power jump serves, the starting players could perform more ace serves, but there were also more serves after which the opponent could use all attack combinations. Thus, the serve efficiency was relatively similar for both types of players.Players using the power jump serve were more likely to earn a point with their first serve than the performers of jump float serve. The likeliness of earning a point with the second consecutive serve increased for players using the jump float serve, but remained the same for performers of power jump serve. At power jump serve, service faults occurred more often after timeout than in play, but good serves were hit equally after timeout and in play. At jump float serve, the number of faults was the same after timeout and in play, but good serves, both aces and serves after which was not possible to use all attack combinations, were more often hit after timeout.Underhand pass was used for receiving float serve almost twice more often than overhand pass, even though the accuracy of the latter was higher