How do different serve types influence offensive structures in complex I in elite women’s volleyball?

Abstract

This study employed Social Network Analysis (SNA) and chi-square tests to investigate the structural variations in the offensive systems of elite women’s volleyball teams when facing different serve types (jump float, jump, and standing serves). The sample comprised 1,434 complete offensive sequences derived from matches between the top eight teams in the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship. To ensure methodological robustness, a Marginal Likelihood Filter (MLF) was applied to extract the authentic tactical backbone of the networks. The results indicated that offensive architectures exhibit distinct structural variations according to the serve type encountered, particularly regarding the primary receiving and attacking hubs. Nevertheless, a striking structural commonality emerged across all constraints: a strong reliance on slower attack tempos (Tempo 3) coupled with a highly distributed offensive formation. Diverging from previous descriptions of deliberate multi-point strategies, our findings highlight a decentralized network configuration designed to mitigate out-of-system conditions. Furthermore, no statistically significant associations were found between the executed serve types and the terminal actions (reception quality and attack effects). These findings underscore the exceptional tactical adaptability and fault tolerance of contemporary elite women’s teams, demonstrating their capacity to absorb initial serving pressures through complex, distributed offensive organizations.