By Brendan Hall

From the Hudl Blog

High-major col­lege coach­es chart plen­ty of things off the ball that give them a clear­er pic­ture. Here’s what to look for, and how you can track it in your program.

Click the play arrow to see the video.

 

The times below refer to time frames in the video.

0:40 — Turning a neg­a­tive into a positive

How do you deal with unprece­dent­ed uncer­tain­ty? Shapiro talks about how the Blue Demons are set­ting the table dur­ing COVID.

2:10 — Back to the basics

There’s still a lot of body-weight train­ing your play­ers can do. Shapiro talks about how they’re com­mu­ni­cat­ing work­outs to the team.

3:20 — What to do with an abbre­vi­at­ed year of film

First, Shapiro says, start by giv­ing col­lege coach­es a full game film. Let them see the whole pic­ture for themselves.

4:55 — ​“That’s not glo­ri­fied in the box score”

College coach­es get thou­sands of emails and high­light reels. How are you going to stand out? The answer might lie in what Shapiro says leads to play­ing time for his freshmen.

6:05 — What coach­es look for off the ball.

How does a super­star like Romeo Weems make an imme­di­ate impact as a fresh­man? Defense, defense, defense. Shapiro breaks down the things he looks for that don’t show up in the stat sheet, including:

• Eliminating blow-by’s (8:10)
• On-ball ener­gy (11:00)
• Active hands (12:00)
• Box outs (13:45)
• Help defense (15:55)
• Ball screen defense (17:25)

19:00 — ​“I’m the best defend­er you’ve ever seen”

…Said no recruit to Shapiro ever. We talk about how aspir­ing col­lege ath­letes can brand them­selves dif­fer­ent­ly to stick out.

20:15 — How to chart the uncharted

Shapiro shares tips and tricks for track­ing all these qual­i­ties coach­es look for on defense.

22:50 — The most impor­tant thing play­ers can do right now?

Ballhandling. You can prac­tice it lit­er­al­ly any­where, Shapiro reminds us — even on grass.

 

From the Hudl Blog

Ryland Brown is an O’Dea High School (WA) assis­tant coach and the res­i­dent out-of-bounds play expert. He breaks down how the Fighting Irish design their side­line and base­line plays, and how they use data to track their success.

0:35 — Helping play­ers get recruited.

Preparing play­ers for the next lev­el with­out an AAU season.

3:26 — Game plan­ning around personnel.

Collaborating with staff to scout and posi­tion play­ers for max­i­mum impact.

4:26 — Using data to mea­sure out-of-bounds suc­cess plays.

Using stats and ana­lyt­ics to set goals and adjust their game plan to execute.

8:22 — Demo using video exe­cute their strategy.

Playlists of their sets and how they deploy lineups.

14:21 — Protecting the tin.

Scouting oppo­nents to sti­fle scor­ing opportunities.

17:04 — Demo of scout­ing oppo­nent out-of-bounds sets.

How they use video to force teams to reset in the half courts.

21:09 — Using num­bers at halftime.

Refocusing on the defen­sive end to stop scor­ing chances.

23:41 — Stopping side­line plays.

Video demo how to take the oppo­nent out of their rhythm.

25:24 — Adopting analytics.

How to start lever­ag­ing data with­in a program.

28:10 — Connect with Coach Brown.

Follow him on Twitter and chat hoops with the Sideline guru.

From the Hudl Blog

By Mark Seeberg

Five decades later, no one has come close to matching Austin Carr and teammate Collis Jones’ tournament scoring record.

Fifty years ago, during the 1969–70 NCAA tournament, Notre Dame’s Austin Carr set the single-game scoring record with 61 points against the Mid-American Conference champion, Ohio University.

Shooting 57% from the field, the 6’3” Notre Dame guard made 25 field goals out of 44 attempts. He nearly duplicated this amazing feat a week later against SEC champion Kentucky and Big Ten champ Iowa, scoring 52 and 45 points respectively. His three-game shooting percentage was 58%.

Significantly, he was joined by teammate Collis Jones who averaged 23 points per game in the three contests. Together, they produced 228 points in three successive tournament games—an average of 76 points per game on 54% marksmanship.

Was this a one-year wonder? A statistical anomaly?

Add the next year of tournament play to the comparison, three games in 1970–71. That year, Carr and Jones combined for 195 points on 45% shooting, an average of 65 points per game. Over the course of six games spanning two tournaments, the duo produced 423 points, shooting 50% from the field and averaging 71 points per game. A two-man scoring record that has stood for fifty years—accomplished without the benefit of the three-pointer.

You don’t have to imagine how they did it—you can watch it. I created a highlight film of the Carr and Jones’ single-game scoring record against Ohio University in March 1970. 

I also used mod­ern ana­lyt­ics to track their per­for­mance. Of 63 field goal attempts, the duo com­plet­ed 34, or 54%. Getting even more gran­u­lar, they com­bined for 61% shoot­ing with­in five feet of the bas­ket, and 50% from beyond five feet.

This feat only becomes more impressive once you compare their performance to today’s teams. Using only their three highest-scoring games, look at how the top sixteen teams in last year’s NCAA tournament stack up against the Carr-Jones tandem.

Amazingly, the Carr-Jones three-game performance in 1969–70 outranks eight of last year’s contestants. Their performance in 1970–71 bumps two of the teams, Oregon and Michigan, from the list altogether.

So will their record ever be broken? Not likely.

Today’s talent pool is shallower and less experienced than in earlier eras. Carr and Jones were both first-round NBA draft choices in 1971. In fact, Carr was the Naismith Award winner that season and was the first player taken in the 1971 draft. Both men were seniors with three consecutive years of varsity experience. Of the fifteen seniors who joined them in the first round of the NBA draft, Carr and Jones played against five of them in head-to-head competition. The best players of the day were seasoned competitors.

College basketball today is facing a talent crisis. A record-breaking 86 underclassmen were NBA early entries last season, and over 40 of them were not even selected in the draft. They left college and took their chances. Combine their departure with the steady stream of high school seniors who skip college for the G-League, overseas play or the NBA, and the pool of kids with sufficient talent and experience to break the Carr-Jones record gets pretty shallow.

And even though the three-pointer gives today’s shooters a huge advantage, the game’s slower pace of play generates fewer overall shot attempts and considerably fewer points. Consider the following chart:

Fifty years ago, teams were attempting 11 more field goals each game and scoring 7 more points. Note in particular, the number of teams averaging 85 or more points per game in the early 1970s compared with today. Keep in mind that these are averages for the entire field of NCAA DI teams. If you drill deeper into the specific Carr-Jones record-breaking performances, the contrast is even starker. Here are two illustrative snapshots:

On average, over the course of two seasons, Notre Dame averaged 80 attempts and 92 points per game. That’s 22 more attempts and 20 more points per game than teams are averaging this season. The pace of play was significantly higher back then, generating more scoring opportunities for the team, as well as for Carr and Jones.

In their tournament game against Ohio University, when Carr set the single-game scoring record of 61 points, the pace was frenetic. On average Notre Dame shot the ball within 9.75 seconds of each possession, usually after one pass. Twenty-three times the Irish shot the ball within five seconds of taking possession, and only on three possessions did they take more than 20 seconds to attempt a field goal. The longest ND possession resulting in a field goal attempt took 25.3 seconds, nearly five seconds less than what today’s 30-second shot clock requires.

But could the record be broken?

Of course. Despite the shallower pool of highly talented players, in any given season there are enough great shooters who could make enough field goals to break Carr’s single-game tournament record of 61 points, or the duo’s record of 85 points. Especially given the multiplying effect of the 3-pointer.

But their multi-game tournament record, an average of 76 points per game over three or more consecutive games? I don’t think so. The overall pace of play today is simply too slow. Like hockey, basketball is a game of “shots on goal.” Quantity often trumps quality. You have to shoot a lot to score a lot.

By Brendan Hall

From the Hudl Blog

Pay atten­tion to the ​“spe­cial teams” of bas­ket­ball, or you may end up pay­ing the price.

In crunch time, the suc­cess of a sin­gle out-of-bounds play can make or break you. Compare it to, say, the kick­ing game in foot­ball, or the pow­er play and penal­ty kill units in ice hock­ey. It might be over­looked at times, but if you’re not fun­da­men­tal­ly sound in those areas, it can cost you dearly.

“They’re the spe­cial teams of bas­ket­ball to me,” says O’Dea High School (Wash.) boys bas­ket­ball assis­tant coach Ryland Brown, who typ­i­cal­ly coor­di­nates the Fighting Irish’s out-of-bounds plays.

“It’s a big one for us. We try to score out of that, and then get into our offense after­wards. So it’s good to pick up on pat­terns for us, espe­cial­ly over the year see­ing which ones work, which ones don’t work, do we need to scratch some out and keep some in.”

Whether you’re a nation­al­ly-ranked stal­wart, or just look­ing to get off the mat, chart­ing the suc­cess of your out of bounds plays can shore up some weak­ness­es — and even stoke the imagination. 

How It Works

You can track side­line and base­line effi­cien­cies in two ways.

One is over­all effi­cien­cy, which assigns a sim­ple ​“suc­cess” or ​“fail­ure” to every play based on whether you scored.

On the oth­er hand, points per sideline/​baseline out of bounds, which aligns sim­i­lar­ly to points per pos­ses­sion, takes into account the actu­al scoring.

How you’ll defend out-of-bounds plays might change from game to game. For instance, let’s say the team you’re about to face went 2 for 4 on base­line plays the pre­vi­ous game, both of them for 3-point­ers. The game before that, this oppo­nent went 3 for 5 on base­line inbounds, all of them layups. How will you pre­pare for this? Take a look at the tagged plays from the chart.

How Coaches Value It

Some high­ly-suc­cess­ful coach­es, such as Beaver Dam (Wisc.) girls bas­ket­ball coach Tim Chase, expand their play­book to as many as 40 dif­fer­ent out-of-bounds plays as they under­stand what’s work­ing for them and try to add new wrin­kles. Others will look at pat­terns over the course of the sea­son, hone in on the plays that work, and scrap the ones that aren’t bring­ing much val­ue to the percentages.

Defensively, coach­es find tremen­dous val­ue in track­ing their oppo­nents’ ten­den­cies on inbounds plays. 

In the Seattle Metro League, one of the nation’s ripest high school leagues for tal­ent, a good scout­ing work­flow is cru­cial. For O’Dea High School, the defend­ing Washington 3A state cham­pi­on, this includes track­ing how those top pro­grams uti­lize their cel­e­brat­ed super­stars when inbound­ing the ball.

What’s bet­ter than cap­ping a great defen­sive stand in the half-court by stuff­ing what the oppo­nent thought would be an easy bas­ket from an out-of-bounds play under­neath the hoop? 

“It’s not one of the four fac­tors, but that’s the No. 1 thing I always go to,” Brown says. ​“It always hurts to do a great job defen­sive­ly, and then give up points out of bounds. So that’s one I always look at — did we win that area? To me that tells me a lot about whether we’re locked in and being alert.”

Some coach­es use side­line plays to get into their offense, instead of cre­at­ing a score, and thus pay spe­cial atten­tion to how they per­form on the baseline. 

Lynden Christian (Wash.) girls bas­ket­ball coach Brady Bomber recalls a recent game that came down to a side­line out-of-bounds play from their oppo­nent, who was trail­ing by two points. Trusting their instincts — and the scout­ing report — the Lynx con­test­ed the shot enough at the rim to come down with the rebound and win in reg­u­la­tion as opposed to play­ing overtime.

“We’re real­ly try­ing not to give up any­thing on that, and we’re going to try to win by get­ting a steal under the bas­ket,” Bomber says. ​“So it’s great to be able to look at, okay, here are the sev­en base­line inbounds plays from the last game. Just to look through those and say, ​‘Here are the three sets they run the most, and any­thing out of here our prin­ci­ples have to adapt.’ Those are big buck­ets, as you know.”

How You Can Use It

The Mendoza line for points per pos­ses­sion gen­er­al­ly sits at 1.0 — any­thing above is great, any­thing below could use some fine-tun­ing. But we can set the bar low­er on this met­ric when it comes to inbound­ing. A top col­lege team will post a points per BLOB/SLOB around 1.2, for instance, but some of the best high school teams in the coun­try oper­ate clos­er to 0.9 and are com­plete­ly fine.

But adding video to the mix will help you gain the most val­ue from these per­cent­ages. Defensively, the more scout film you can acquire and run reports on, the more accu­rate­ly you’ll be able to eval­u­ate what a team’s best sets are, where they’re trend­ing, and how you can make the prop­er adjustments.

Pairing this with shot charts and the Four Factors can help you under­stand star play­ers’ ten­den­cies on those plays. Does that scor­er flare out? Do they spot up for a three? Do they get downhill? 

When it comes to scout­ing your own team, know­ing what works and what doesn’t work doesn’t just help you opti­mize your play­book. It can also give you ideas on how to pre­pare for the inevitable coun­ters to your best plays. (Remember, your oppo­nents are scout­ing you too.) 

And maybe some new ideas will spring up. Could you set a screen for that streaky shoot­er off the bench? Or per­haps a play­er with a great rebound­ing per­cent­age can be used a dif­fer­ent way in the post. There’s lim­it­less potential. 

**

With inter­ac­tive reports, see­ing is believ­ing. When you’re try­ing to learn how the num­bers come togeth­er, hav­ing the asso­ci­at­ed video be a click away can make all the dif­fer­ence. Hudl Assist can help your team get the most out of their inbound data.

Learn More | See a Demo

This article is republished with permission. It was written by DoSicko and originally appeared on HoopCoach.org.

Football coaches have long analyzed their team’s offensive and defensive efficiencies inside the red zones.  The thinking is simple, “We got inside the 20; we better damn well score.”  Teams have special red zone plays and red zone practice time.  And well they should; the effort to move the ball there and the relatively low number of possessions makes it incumbent on teams to come away with points once the ball is that deep in enemy territory.

Speaking of possessions, one of the inherent difficulties of coaching basketball is getting players to understand the value of a possession.  The high number of possessions in a basketball game at any level lends itself to thinking like this, “Big deal, we’ve got a zillion more possessions in this game; who cares if we turned it over or took a bad shot?”  This lack of understanding is not restricted to young players but is certainly more prevalent among lesser experienced players.  I remember asking players at camps how many possessions there were in a game.  Of course, the number depends on the playing tempo of both teams.  But many campers didn’t even have a clue.  Getting these players to first realize that possessions are finite is a start.

With that said, any device one can use to break the game down into smaller pieces for teaching purposes is extremely valuable.  One such breakdown is an analysis of how one’s team performs in basketball’s “red zone”.

It shouldn’t be difficult to designate a basketball red zone.  For me, it would clearly start with the key and most likely include the low blocks and the high post.  One could add the elbows and the mid-post areas, if one so chooses.  No matter.  It’s your analysis, so you make the call.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, it’s probably wise to dispel the importance of the concept of “points in paint”.  For years, this stat has been quoted like it’s totally conclusive.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  It merely indicates the number of points scored on field goals in the paint and ignores several other important types of points scored in addition to just field goals:

1. It does not include free throws scored directly on shooting fouls in the paint or at the low block.  For example, over the course of a game, if Team A makes 9 FT’s on shooting fouls “in the paint”, those points need to be added to the “points in the paint” tally.
2. It does not account for the FT’s made after the one-and-one kicks in-that were directly the result of a foul made before the bonus because of offensive penetration in the paint off the bounce or by pass.  For example, let’s say that 3 non-shooting fouls were committed because the ball entered the “red-zone” before the one-and-one kicked in and that the bonus kicked in at 7 fouls.  Theoretically, every “points in the paint” FT scored after the bonus is 3/7 or 42.9% attributable to fouls in the paint before the bonus.  If 12 FT’s were made after the bonus, then 12 X 42.9% is 5 points that needs to be added to the “points in the paint” tally.

So, let’s say that a game stat sheet said Team A scored 24 points in the paint.  If one adds the 9 FT’s scored on “in the paint shooting fouls” and the 5 FT’s scored on one and one FT’s scored after the bonus kicked in, the ACTUAL points in the point tally is 38 points (24+9+5).

Now, let’s go back to “red zone” analysis.  To accurately analyze red-zone efficiency, one must also add 2 and 3 point FG’s that were scored as a result of getting the ball into the “red zone”, as the defense adjusted to the penetration and the offense kicked the ball back out to the perimeter for a shot.  Let’s say that Team A makes 4- 2 point FG’s (8 points) and 5-3 point FG’s (15 points) attributable to red zone penetration, the total number of “red zone” points for Team A is 61 (24+9+5+8+15).

It’s obvious that the points in the paint total of 24 points on the stat sheet and the 61 “red zone” points tell two completely different stories and that “red zone” points is a far more telling stat than “points in the paint”.

To analyze “red zone” efficiency then, one needs to compute “red zone” penetrations and divide the points by penetrations. (perhaps in our hypothetical example 61 points divided by 47 penetrations or 1.290.  Obviously, this number, in of itself, only tells us something when compared to other games.  But the biggest advantage is that it helps coaches first understand patterns of success and failure. The bottom line is that the coach is constantly assessing these two questions, “How and why did we score when we get the ball in red zone and how and why didn’t we score?”  But, perhaps just as important as the success/failure ratio of red zone efficiency is just the simple concept of getting the ball there.  If players are totally cognizant of the importance of getting the ball there, their notion of the importance of each possession will also improve.

Then too, one can assess defensive “red zone” efficiency and the questions become, “How and why did we stop our opponent from scoring or how and why did our opponents score when they get the ball into the red zone.  The simple concept of preventing opponents from getting the ball in the red zone will also serve to help players realize the importance of each defensive possession.

Krossover Joins the Hudl Family

We’ve added Krossover to dou­ble down on our com­mit­ment to pro­vide teams more pow­er­ful tools, faster break­downs, and high­er qual­i­ty video.

——

Today, I’m thrilled to announce the addi­tion of Krossover to the Hudl fam­i­ly and to share our vision for help­ing teams make bet­ter, faster deci­sions with video and data.

Over the past decade, Krossover pio­neered full-ser­vice video analy­sis and broke down games for thou­sands of coach­es. They changed the game in our indus­try. But in that time, the demands of teams have steadi­ly increased. They need high­er qual­i­ty video, faster break­downs, in-game insights and more expo­sure for ath­letes. These are all areas we’re invest­ing in aggres­sive­ly and why we believe Hudl is a great long-term home for Krossover customers.

I’d like to take this moment to share how Krossover fits into our mis­sion and vision for the future.

Our mis­sion is two-fold.

First, we’re here to help our teams win and our coach­es become world-class. Sec­ond, and equal­ly impor­tant, we’re here to give you time back to focus on what mat­ters — whether that’s spend­ing more time with your ath­letes, with your fam­i­ly or in the classroom.

You demand more data, faster, with less effort.

Ten years ago, coach­es kept stats by hand and spent hours break­ing down game film. Five years ago, the sim­ple pair­ing of video and data on the Hudl plat­form gave teams an edge.

Today, the lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion and the impor­tance of data-dri­ven deci­sions are high­er than ever. The bur­den this places on coach­es is real and has pushed us to evolve the role we play for our teams. It’s not enough to put pow­er­ful tools at your fin­ger­tips — we need to bring the insights to you. That’s why we launched Hudl Assist in 2015 and are now bring­ing Krossover into the family.

Hudl cus­tomers will ben­e­fit from the extra analy­sis firepower.

With the addi­tion of Krossover, we’ll strength­en our ana­lyt­ics tools and break­down ser­vices. Their com­mu­ni­ty of ana­lysts will help us break down more than one mil­lion games this year, and their best prac­tices will help us improve our prod­ucts. Along the way, you’ll see faster turn­around times and even high­er break­down quality.

Our pace of inno­va­tion is accelerating.

Our pur­pose is more than help­ing you win the next game. We’re build­ing solu­tions that deliv­er insights as close to real-time as pos­si­ble so you and your ath­letes can make adjust­ments as the game unfolds.

Five years ago, we offered the abil­i­ty to record and upload video with our mobile app. Over half of our teams use that method today. But, we can’t stop there. Last year, we launched Hudl Focus, our smart cam­era that auto­mat­i­cal­ly records and uploads games and prac­tices. This year, we’re adding live stream­ing and will test Focus for out­door sports.

We’ve expand­ed Hudl to offer sport-spe­cif­ic tools across ath­let­ic depart­ments, includ­ing reports and break­downs for foot­ball, bas­ket­ball, vol­ley­ball, soc­cer, lacrosse and ice hockey.

And there’s more to come.

This month, we’re launch­ing detailed attack ten­den­cies reports for vol­ley­ball. In the com­ing months, we’ll roll out new insights for soc­cer, Hudl Assist for ice hock­ey, and improved video qual­i­ty for every team. That’s a small sam­ple of what’s com­ing soon.

In the not-so-dis­tant future, we see a world where every one of your games will be record­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly. Video will stream to you on the side of the court or field along with exact­ly the data you need dur­ing the game. Your fans that can’t make it to the game will enjoy a pro­fes­sion­al-qual­i­ty live broad­cast. Every key moment will be assem­bled into playlists for half-time review and high­light reels will be added to ath­lete pro­files as they hap­pen. Your post-game review will be primed and ready the minute the final whis­tle blows, and the scout­ing report for your next oppo­nent will already be teed up.

Keep push­ing us.

Our vision is big because that’s what you deserve, and I’ve nev­er been more con­fi­dent that we’ll deliv­er on it. Krossover join­ing the Hudl fam­i­ly takes us a step clos­er to bring­ing it all to life.

Thank you.

John Wirtz, Hudl Co-Founder and Chief Prod­uct Officer