WINNING WITH DATA - Alex Simons (1 of 2)
Sep 24, 2026 · 24 min · 8 segments
- Speakers
Alex SimonsGuestJohn MayerHostBilly AllenHost
Sep 24, 2026 · 24 min · 8 segments
Alex SimonsGuestJohn MayerHostBilly AllenHost
Um, so for, for the topic today, we wanna go into your Substack blog called Overqualified Assistant.
Before we go into some of the topics, can you give listeners just an overview and a sense of your blog and what, what they'd find if they check it out?
So starting back in February, once I retired from Microsoft, I was like, "You know, I really wanna understand kind of the underpinnings of volleyball better." Particularly as a coach, you know, you're always fighting for where should I invest practice time? You know, you've got two, two and a half hours.
And I just really wanted to get a, a-- see if I could find a statistical understanding of what areas of volleyball matter the most in terms of winning, so that I could invest lots of time there, and which areas of volleyball don't matter as much, so I could decrease my investments there.
It was actually a Joe Trinzii, uh, uh, $7 study that he did that kind of inspired me to get started, and I just kinda took off from there.
You'll find men's volleyball stats, women's volleyball stats, uh, and then a bunch of stuff recently, which is just things that I've been thinking about here at Texas as we get ready for the season.
It's interesting there, you know, people talk about coaching trees, but Joe Trinzii has, like, a statistical Data nerd tree.
But [laughs], but there's a whole group that I feel like he's inspired and, and I'm sure you guys have challenged each other and helped each other, but there is this, like, coaching statistical tree within, within volleyball.
I mean, I love the work that Joe does, but I think I felt like I could do it at a much bigger scale 'cause I could manage much, much bigger data sets than he was using.
Um, so for, for the topic today, we wanna go into your Substack blog called Overqualified Assistant.
Before we go into some of the topics, can you give listeners just an overview and a sense of your blog and what, what they'd find if they check it out?
So starting back in February, once I retired from Microsoft, I was like, "You know, I really wanna understand kind of the underpinnings of volleyball better." Particularly as a coach, you know, you're always fighting for where should I invest practice time? You know, you've got two, two and a half hours.
And I just really wanted to get a, a-- see if I could find a statistical understanding of what areas of volleyball matter the most in terms of winning, so that I could invest lots of time there, and which areas of volleyball don't matter as much, so I could decrease my investments there.
It was actually a Joe Trinzii, uh, uh, $7 study that he did that kind of inspired me to get started, and I just kinda took off from there.
You'll find men's volleyball stats, women's volleyball stats, uh, and then a bunch of stuff recently, which is just things that I've been thinking about here at Texas as we get ready for the season.
It's interesting there, you know, people talk about coaching trees, but Joe Trinzii has, like, a statistical Data nerd tree.
But [laughs], but there's a whole group that I feel like he's inspired and, and I'm sure you guys have challenged each other and helped each other, but there is this, like, coaching statistical tree within, within volleyball.
I mean, I love the work that Joe does, but I think I felt like I could do it at a much bigger scale 'cause I could manage much, much bigger data sets than he was using.
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