KINEXON Basketball Analytics Platform Offers NCAA Teams Solution For Player Load
Paradise, NV – March 9, 2017 – T-Mobile Arena: Tyler Dorsey (5) of the University of Oregon Ducks during the 2017 Pac 12 Men’s College Basketball Tournament
(Photo by Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images)
Basketball coaches and trainers are charged with an important responsibility: manage a player’s load so as not to further his or her risk of injury. Tracking this becomes difficult when you realize the varying natures of each position on the court. While a center might experience many short acceleration bursts, a guard will cover longer distances in transition scenarios.
KINEXON is a basketball tracking and analytics platform that is offering college coaches a solution to this problem, and it is looking to partner with more NCAA basketball programs next season. The analytics gained by KINEXON expand much further upon a metric commonly used by coaches called player load.
Instead of providing one universal load metric for a player’s time on the court, KINEXON’s metrics detail training load based on each precise position on the court. Essentially it breaks down the classic “player load” metric into the specific jumps, high-speed transitions, intensity and length of an acceleration, etc.
The context-based analytics are gained by having players wear skin-contact sensors that send and receive signals to “anchors,” or satellites, placed around the court. Information retrieved by the anchors are sent to the KINEXON base where raw data is transformed into useful analysis about player performance.
This exact process was demonstrated to a group of college coaches at the 2017 NABC convention in Phoenix. The event, held in conjunction with the NCAA Men’s Final Four last month, allowed KINEXON the opportunity to showcase how valuable its analytics can be.
According to a LinkedIn post from KINEXON co-founder Maximilian Schmidt, one strength & conditioning coach had the following to say: “This is the first basketball analytics platform that really captures all relevant information on the physical demands of the game: High speed running in transitions, quick changes of directions in offense and defense and load associated with jumps.”
The KINEXON platform offers coaches a way to treat and assess each player as an individual entity. What was the exact physical expenditure of the point guard during his 20 minutes of playing time? That information can help coaches maximize a player’s potential while minimizing the risk of injury.
