Duke Basketball Deploys Big-Data Analytics

The Duke University Blue Devils had a secret weapon at their disposal en route to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship trophy. Duke was one of a handful of collegiate teams to deploy STATS’ SportVU player-tracking technology in the 2014-15 season.

“Our proprietary work with SportVU provides us a more complete picture of each player on our team and puts us in a stronger position to further their development,” says Kevin Cullen, basketball director of information technology, Duke. “The insights we’ve made these first two years have been invaluable, and we believe we are just getting started.”

Says Greg Kirkorsky, EVP, global sales and marketing, STATS, “The team at STATS takes pride in knowing that SportVU player tracking was a part of Duke University’s journey in a championship season. We congratulate Coach Krzyzewski, the players, and every member of their basketball program on a remarkable season and dominating run in March.”

SportVU, a system of six cameras and STATS’ proprietary software, calibrates and measures both players and the ball in X and Y coordinates. The result is a continuous stream of groundbreaking statistics based on speed, distance, player-separation, and ball-possession data that allows more-detailed and -targeted analysis of players and teams.

SportVU provides the Blue Devils access to performance data for advanced scouting and player evaluation. It offers such game intricacies as floor-spacing efficiency, drives, pick and roll performance, rebound chances, potential assists, catch-and-shoot opportunities, post touches, sprints and the total distances run during a game.

The Blue Devils became the first collegiate team to incorporate big-data analytics into their player development and game-day strategies in 2013, when they installed SportVU in both Cameron Indoor Stadium and the Michael W. Krzyzewski Center for use in practice.

STATS is also the Official Player Tracking Partner of the NBA, with SportVU cameras deployed in every NBA arena since the 2013-14 season.

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