Marty Gordon
NRVsports@mainstreetnewspapers.com
Everyone is looking for an advantage in sports, and there’s a new method to give athletes an edge. For one local college basketball program, this has become more prominent as it takes the next step toward winning more games.
It’s spelled A-N-A-L-Y-T-I-C-S (Analytics) and has been described as the “science of winning” and refers to using advanced data to gain a competitive edge, moving beyond traditional methods to optimize performance, strategy and business operations.
Radford University first-year coach Zach Chu has embraced analytics.
“I would describe it as a way to be more efficient in everything we do from who we recruit to the style with play. We are trying to problem solve through data,” he said.
Chu brings with him over nine years of experience in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and most recently served as the Chief Strategist for Men’s Basketball for SMU for the past season.
“The landscape of intercollegiate athletics is undeniably undergoing rapid change,” Chu said as he reflected on his new role with the Highlanders. “The traditional methods of building a program are far less relevant. I have strong conviction that an analytically driven strategy can create a distinct competitive advantage, particularly when applied end-to-end across a basketball program: from player evaluation, to portal management, to game strategy.”
Prior to his role with the Mustangs, Chu served for three seasons on Carlisle’s staff with the Indiana Pacers as the Manager of Game Strategy and Analytics. While with the Pacers, the squad advanced all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2023-24.
“I think that is a prime example where we used analytics and did problem solving through data, going from just winning 25 games in one year to being in the conference finals the next,” Chu said.
The science involves analysis to collect data on player movement and physical exertion, which is then used for decisions on training, injury prevention, player acquisition and in-game strategy.
The goal, according to Chu, is to make coaching staffs more informed, helping with data-driven decisions that increase win probability and improve overall team and business success.
Sometimes analytics can even challenge conventional wisdom. For example, analytics may show that it is statistically better to go for a fourth down in football instead of punting the ball in certain situations.
The phase comes thanks to a book by Thomas Davenport, “Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning.”, highlighting how a deep, strategic use of data can become a strategic source for competition advantage.
The other story involves of the Oakland Athletics major league baseball’s use of sabermetrics to acquire undervalued talent under budget constraints, featured in the same titled book and movie, “Money Ball.”
Major League baseball was one of the first to accept this new idea of doing things, creating analytic offices across the board for the past 10 years. Analytics has fundamentally changed decision-making both on and off the field and court. The approach has transformed baseball beyond traditional subjective scouting methods and intuition.
“Sports analytics uses this data to help athletes and teams perform better.” Chu pointed out.
He also has brought in a coaching staff that is “data-driven” in everything they do.
Brady Baker joins the program as a data analyst and returns to Virginia with over seven years of experience in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and most recently served as the Manager of Basketball Data Science for the Indiana Pacers for the past four seasons.
While in Indiana, Baker installed analytical processes on both the front office and coaching side to help the Pacers to two straight Eastern Conference Finals and their first NBA Finals appearance since 2000 last season.
“Having worked alongside Brady for three years in Indiana, I was blown away by his ability to build a thorough process that served as a distinct competitive advantage for the organization,” commented. “Our quest under Kevin Pritchard and Rick Carlisle to create a differentiating approach using analytics to optimize both personnel selection and game strategy started with Brady’s execution of player modeling and evaluations. I am very excited to work shoulder to shoulder with him once again here at Radford as we work to build a data-driven approach that I believe will develop sustainable success through an unpredictable time in college athletics”
Jack Feld brings substantial analytical capacity to the Highlanders’ staff having spent the past seven years in various analytical and scouting capacities serving both college programs and the NBA.
Feld graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2024 with a degree in mathematics and statistics, after spending the three years at the University of Miami.
The use of data analytics provide an edge by allowing teams to analysis opponents’ playing styles, develop specific game plans and make real-time decisions during games.
According to Davenport’s book, for example, analytics influences shot-selection, emphasizing high-percentage areas closer to the basket.
The question is how it will help Radford University basketball reach heights no one has ever seen before. Chu hopes a conference championship and maybe a visit to the NCAA basketball tournament at the end of the season.
