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.""
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
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.
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.
How long til Nate Silver has a spot on the bench?
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.
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
Um... Speedo Guy
-jk
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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 BrilliantIt 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 worst part about this warning: 13% of all DBRers will never leave the house again