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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    Boston

    Embrace the dork side: "Duke's analytic advantage keeps growing"

    http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebaske...-keeps-growing

    I believe a big part of the hate is a perception that Duke plays from an unfair, advantaged position. This recent article on ESPN panders to this story-line. Money quotes:

    "Duke is the only school in the country employing military-grade camera hardware in games and practices."

    "So, yeah, if you're an ACC coach, go ahead and add "potentially massive data advantage" to your list of Duke-related concerns. Slot it in just behind "loads of NBA talent" and "a coach nine games away from his 1000th career win.""

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Boston, MA
    Quote Originally Posted by blUDAYvil View Post
    http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebaske...-keeps-growing

    I believe a big part of the hate is a perception that Duke plays from an unfair, advantaged position. This recent article on ESPN panders to this story-line. Money quotes:

    "Duke is the only school in the country employing military-grade camera hardware in games and practices."

    "So, yeah, if you're an ACC coach, go ahead and add "potentially massive data advantage" to your list of Duke-related concerns. Slot it in just behind "loads of NBA talent" and "a coach nine games away from his 1000th career win.""
    Mods - can we break this out into a new thread? This is too cool.

    Thanks
    Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill

    President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    Mount Kisco, NY
    Quote Originally Posted by flyingdutchdevil View Post
    Mods - can we break this out into a new thread? This is too cool.

    Thanks
    Just merge it with the "true road game" thread because playing huge neutral site games instead of home and home series is what helps pay for all this stuff!

  4. #4
    Reading through the Grantland piece from a year ago on how the Raptors adopted SportVU, my guess is that Duke will benefit from this in a couple of years rather than this season or the next. What's really interesting about this is how SportVU allows the Raptors to know the specifics about players. Duke will only play an opponent once or twice in a given season, how useful will this become to scout opposing teams? In the NBA, teams play each other all the time and players stick around for years. The system has the ability to capture all sorts of data on all the teams. At Duke, this is likely going to remain limited to just providing data on our own players. That will be useful, for sure, but not as useful as in other applications.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Deeetroit City
    Quote Originally Posted by blUDAYvil View Post
    http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebaske...-keeps-growing

    I believe a big part of the hate is a perception that Duke plays from an unfair, advantaged position. This recent article on ESPN panders to this story-line. Money quotes:

    "Duke is the only school in the country employing military-grade camera hardware in games and practices."

    "So, yeah, if you're an ACC coach, go ahead and add "potentially massive data advantage" to your list of Duke-related concerns. Slot it in just behind "loads of NBA talent" and "a coach nine games away from his 1000th career win.""
    The article alludes to the key issue, but fails to really drive the point home. How many programs could (would be willing to) make significant use of the mass of raw data? Duke has the equipment, yes, but Duke ALSO has a basketball director of information technology, "a former team manager who graduated from Duke with a degree in computer science in 2007." Oh yeah, the CEO of the program has an advanced degree in logistics from the world's finest military academy, along with post-graduate work in the field.

    Every NBA player had access to the statistics that Shane Battier used in his analytics. ONLY Shane used the data the way Shane did.

    It wouldn't surprise me if SportVU struck some sort of deal with Duke to get the equipment into the 2 facilities in exchange for assistance in producing some useful way of utilizing the information. I would imagine Duke would provide basic level analytical use and retain its more advanced uses in house. The NBA is using it, so I imagine there are some fairly sophisticated analyses being conducted, I doubt the really useful stuff is being shared.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, DC area
    Quote Originally Posted by OldPhiKap View Post
    Good news. Wonder how Az.st. Is doing though. Much closer, but disappointed fan base from what I can gather.
    And Julio (a U of A post-grad) laughs!

    -jk

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by BD80 View Post
    I doubt the really useful stuff is being shared.
    I read in a different article that not only do the NBA front office people not share the useful stuff, they jealously guard their formuli and algorithms like military secrets. This stuff is considered a key competitive edge.

  8. #8
    Dev11's Avatar
    Dev11 is offline Commissioner of Statistics, DBR Podcast
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Boston
    Quote Originally Posted by Kedsy View Post
    I read in a different article that not only do the NBA front office people not share the useful stuff, they jealously guard their formuli and algorithms like military secrets. This stuff is considered a key competitive edge.
    Which begs the question, who knows what? Given that players and coaches move around a lot, the teams probably just try to produce the results in ways that can be digested but not spread.

  9. #9
    How long til Nate Silver has a spot on the bench?

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    The injury prevention aspect is what I'm most interested in. Kevin Cullen said in this WSJ article:

    "You add 75 or 100 practices when the quality of your opponent is the same every day, and you can get a much better picture of who a player is," said Kevin Cullen, Duke's director of information technology. With its emphasis on practice data, Duke hopes that SportVU is as much a tool for its training and medical staff as it is for the basketball coaches, Cullen said.

    All I know is that in the past 14 months Duke has been the healthiest it's been in years. KNOCK ON WOOD.

    And now that SportVU has teamed up with Catapult, hopefully Duke has an edge in injury prevention going forward.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Baltimore
    I think that the REAL question here is, how can the crazies use this information to improve their game as well? The cameras are right there in Cameron...

    Perhaps an analysis of the opponent's offensive efficiency vs crazie activity? Maybe an analysis of which free throw distractions are most effective. Come on people! Let's use this data to make the home advantage even better!!
    Last edited by DukeDevil; 12-17-2014 at 12:26 AM. Reason: Spelling

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by DukeDevil View Post
    Maybe an analysis of which free throw distractions are most effective.
    This was done in the early 1990s and IIRC ran in The Chronicle with a brief excerpt in Sports Illustrated. I recall the shhhhh...AAAAAHHHH!!! being most effective.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, DC area
    Quote Originally Posted by hurleyfor3 View Post
    This was done in the early 1990s and IIRC ran in The Chronicle with a brief excerpt in Sports Illustrated. I recall the shhhhh...AAAAAHHHH!!! being most effective.
    Um... Speedo Guy

    -jk

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Baltimore
    I always felt "SHHHHH AH" would be more effective if it was a quick "SHHH" followed by true silence and then an "AH" rather than shushing so loud and long we may as well be cheering.
    Duke '03
    Tent 1 '99/'00

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Manhattan
    Quote Originally Posted by DukeDevil View Post
    I think that the REAL question here is, how can the crazies use this information to improve their game as well? The cameras are right there in Cameron...

    Perhaps an analysis of the opponent's offensive efficiency vs crazie activity? Maybe an analysis of which free throw distractions are most effective. Come on people! Let's use this data to make the home advantage even better!!
    I'll say this: the whole "Boink, Boink, Boink, Pass, Shot" shtick has a perfect 100% success rate so far this season. Knock on wood.

    And there is some talk to using a study that was done a few years ago — one different from the study in the Chronicle — on how to best distract a free throw shooter to our advantage. Look for some new distractions coming down the pipe.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    Mount Kisco, NY
    Quote Originally Posted by Native View Post
    I'll say this: the whole "Boink, Boink, Boink, Pass, Shot" shtick has a perfect 100% success rate so far this season. Knock on wood.
    The Arizona home crowd was doing this versus Gonzaga a few weeks back.

    Analytics is sure to be the next arms race. Cal has hired an advanced stats guru to keep his players happy in the platoon system ("We'll make sure the NBA knows your per-minute stats so that lack of PT is a non issue!") I have to believe that, in addition to the proposed Rupp Renovation, UK is going to want these cameras. The boosters better dig deep.

  17. #17
    There was a discussion on SportVU last year. Yep, here it is...

    I agree that Duke's program is light years ahead of most D-1 programs with stuff like this. Is it an advantage? Yes. Is it unfair? No.

    These articles are nice, but I'd love to see a DBP report by Marshall and Amile on the ins and outs of SportVU.
    "Something in my vicinity is Carolina blue and this offends me." - HPR

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    GoDuke video on Duke's analytics / SportVu and game preparation: http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.db...DB_OEM_ID=4200

    Nothing too interesting divulged here.

  19. #19

    SportVU to the People!: Liberty and Justise for all

    This 3/26/15 Bloomberg article, Duke Fans Are About to Unlock the Most Sophisticated Stats in College Sports, reports that GoDuke and some Fuqua students are joining forces to open up 80 years of Duke data for the masses, within the next month or so.
    It will eventually record details as minute as how long a certain player dribbles before making a basket, the specific patterns the ball makes as it moves across the court, and the tempo of play when a team wins vs. when it loses.
    The best part about this news: one of the Fuqua students is named Brilliant
    The worst part about this warning: 13% of all DBRers will never leave the house again

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Halifax, Nova Scotia
    Quote Originally Posted by bedeviled View Post
    This 3/26/15 Bloomberg article, Duke Fans Are About to Unlock the Most Sophisticated Stats in College Sports, reports that GoDuke and some Fuqua students are joining forces to open up 80 years of Duke data for the masses, within the next month or so.


    The best part about this news: one of the Fuqua students is named Brilliant
    The worst part about this warning: 13% of all DBRers will never leave the house again
    Why would you need to leave the house when everything can be seen online and can also be extremely well analyzed?

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