Brief Dispatch from UNC Basketball Analytics Summit
By John Bauman
This past weekend, the University of North Carolina’s business school hosted a Basketball Analytics Summit, aptly named the “SPEIA Basketball Analytics Summit.” Featured speakers included Ken Pomeroy and Dr. Patrick Lucey of STATS. Here are a few takeaways from the summit relating specifically to college basketball and technological advances that make scouting easier.
— I went to a talk by Martin Matak, the founder of VERT. VERT is an advanced wearable jump technology that provides coaches and players with real-time data for injury prevention, motivation and performance. One of the main selling points of the talk was injury prevention for athletes, but wearables like VERT will also have an impact in scouting.
Matak shared an anecdote about Peyton Silva at last year’s combine. While doing the vertical jump, Silva was wearing a VERT device. His numbers were lower on the official combine recordings than the VERT device showed because he mis-hit the thing at the top of his jump that told combine officials how high he jumped. He wanted to use the VERT data, but he couldn’t because the company wasn’t combine approved last year. Wearables will be approved soon at combines and could change how scouts look at college players. There will be a lot more data and more accurate data on jump height and even on more advanced things like jump load and G-Force. Look for wearables to be more present within the next few years.
— Dr. Patrick Lucey of STATS made a lot of interesting points over the weekend. At one point on Saturday, he entertained the discussion of all college teams getting SportVU cameras like all 30 NBA teams do. Now, there are a lot of logistical and expensive challenges with that, and I think it’s a ways away. Also, there’s the question of whether college teams even want the SportVU data — some NBA teams don’t use it. But if colleges did get SportVU data, that would be really helpful for pro scouts trying to look at how college players’ games would transition to the NBA. Again, this is a few years away, but it could change the scouting process, making it more quantitative for NBA front office types.
— Nate Britt of the North Carolina Tar Heels was in attendance at parts of the conference. Britt shared with the Daily Tar Heel that UNC doesn’t have an analytics expert, but don’t think that analytics haven’t impacted the college game. I believe Kentucky’s analytics expert was at the conference last year, and Notre Dame’s analytics guru was in attendance both years. It may not be to the extent that it changes the pro game, but analytics is slowly filtering down. Look for more analytics gurus to join college staffs in the next few years.
A couple quick hitters to close out…
— Ken Pomeroy‘s talk was very interesting. He did a improv analysis of any college basketball team that the crowd called out using his website, kenpom.com. The team that someone in the crowd shouted out was Siena, and Pomeroy proceeded to talk through Siena’s strengths and weaknesses as a team using the site.
— On the fan experience and engagement panel, someone shared how in the future, fans in the stadium may wear a device that let’s you experience the same heart rate as the players on the field. As their heart rate increased under pressure, you’d be able to feel it through the device. Interesting, but also kinda weird, right?
— Check out this link. It’s a project from “Sports Analytics @ Disney Research Pittsburgh” that predicts shot and pass probabilities for two scenarios. You can move the players around and see how the probability that Tim Duncan will shoot vs. pass changes. This model only works for two teams now, but it could be a really interesting coaching tool if scaled up to all teams and scenarios.