Apr 6, 2015; Indianapolis, IN, USA; The Duke Blue Devils celebrate beating the Wisconsin Badgers in the 2015 NCAA Men
The Champion Duke Blue Devils might have gone into March Madness with one of the best starting five in the game and one of the greatest coaches of all time, but their success can also be attributed to some useful technology.
STATS’s SportsVU is a system of six cameras and STATS proprietary software which calibrates and measures basketball players and the ball on an x and y plane. This allows Duke coaches to gather a stream of statistics based around speed, distance, player separation and ball possession.
“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,” said Kevin Cullen, Duke’s Basketball Director of Information Technology. “The insights we’ve made these first two years have been invaluable and we believe we are just getting started.”
The information gathered by the SportVU system gathers incredibly specific categories like floor spacing efficiencies, drives, pick and roll performance, rebound chances, potential assists, post touches and more.
The NCAAB Champion Duke Blue Devils were the first team to incorporate SportVU into their stadiums, installing the system into both Cameron Indoor Stadium and the Michael W. Kzyzewski Center in 2013.
“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,” said Greg Kirkorsky, EVP of Global Sales and Marketing at STATS.
We have seen it time and time again this year, organizations using a combination of hardware and software to gather and use data to improve their team.
This time, there is a National Championship to show for it. And proof that even one of the greatest coaches of all time (in any sport) recognizes the benefit of using technology.
