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View Full Version : Butler's secret? "Moneyball"-esque stat guru who's a Duke grad



rsvman
03-21-2013, 12:48 PM
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/-college-basketball-mens-tournament/news/20130320/drew-cannon-butler/?sct=uk_wr_a2

Interesting story. Apparently Butler hired a Duke grad to do stats for the team. Coach Stevens is apparently a big believer in numbers and the power of stats (in addition to what he sees and traditional coaching approaches).

Coach Stevens says it's only a matter of time before this concept spreads to many other teams. Maybe it will even become the norm.

DukieInBrasil
03-21-2013, 01:36 PM
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/-college-basketball-mens-tournament/news/20130320/drew-cannon-butler/?sct=uk_wr_a2

Interesting story. Apparently Butler hired a Duke grad to do stats for the team. Coach Stevens is apparently a big believer in numbers and the power of stats (in addition to what he sees and traditional coaching approaches).

Coach Stevens says it's only a matter of time before this concept spreads to many other teams. Maybe it will even become the norm.

I don't know if it's become the norm in baseball, but it is certainly widely appreciated by GMs in MLB. The article in the NYT a couple of years ago (when Battier was playing for Houston) applied Moneyball style stats to his game and showed his value was far higher than what his traditional stats might indicate. Wouldn't surprise me at all if this became more widely used by NCAA coaches, especially younger ones.

sporthenry
03-21-2013, 01:49 PM
It will definitely become the norm at least in some capacity. This one is interesting b/c he is sort of a jack of all trades. He doesn't just crunch kenpom numbers but does recruiting, practice and game set efficiencies. Eventually sportsVU will become the norm in all arenas and teams will use it to determine what sets to run and how to defend them.

If I could go back and do it again, I'd major in statistics or econ but I was too pragmatic and didn't think a career like this would ever be practical. Not that he is living the high life at Butler but his future certainly seems bright.

loran16
03-21-2013, 04:33 PM
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/-college-basketball-mens-tournament/news/20130320/drew-cannon-butler/?sct=uk_wr_a2

Interesting story. Apparently Butler hired a Duke grad to do stats for the team. Coach Stevens is apparently a big believer in numbers and the power of stats (in addition to what he sees and traditional coaching approaches).

Coach Stevens says it's only a matter of time before this concept spreads to many other teams. Maybe it will even become the norm.

Cannon's a unique guy who has been around for a while; not sure if this can really spread very quickly. He's basically been both an intern of Telep and scouting and Pomeroy and crew (not really an intern of the stat guys, but he's a student of the stuff). Before he graduated, he was writing on bball prospectus on applying advanced stats to HS Basketball Tournies - see here: http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2231. There's not really a guy who can be around full time to help a coach like that other than him right now.

You will see things like you already do - Pomeroy for example has a commission from i think ISU to help their program with his work. But not on Cannon's level.

CrazyNotCrazie
03-21-2013, 04:53 PM
Sounds like he's doing some really interesting things, and good for Coach Stevens for embracing such ideas. I think it is very dangerous to be too dependent on statistics and advanced quantitative analysis, but you can't be ignorant of it either.

I'm surprised that during 4 years at Duke Cannon did not become more involved with the basketball team.