INSIDE THE NUMBERS: Going All In On Analytics
When it comes to on-court strategy, NC State assistant coach Brandon Chambers, who is the program’s defensive coordinator, is a strong believer in the power of analytics.
“Specifically to the defense, they ask all the time, like, what's important? We had to give a top ten metric, offensively, defensively, and then they're always tinkering.”
For Chambers, there are key metrics that have become central to modern basketball strategy.
“Obviously the four factors in college basketball [are key], in basketball in general, effective field goal percentage, offensive rebound percentage, free throw rate, and [turnover rate],” he said.
These metrics help the team quantify and improve both offensive and defensive efficiency.
“For us defensively, we like to create a lot of steals,” he said. “We've been top ten in the country in steals. We actually led it two years ago. In our last year at LSU, we led the country in steals.”
Chambers’ background in high-steal defensive systems underlines his preference for aggressive defense. “We like young athletes that have tremendous recovery speed, whether it be in gaps on the ball or at the rim, and we're able to kind of quantify those things to a certain degree.”
Still, analytics were not always high on Chambers’ priority list when crafting defenses. However, that has changed, and he praises the synergy within NC State’s staff, especially between the general manager Andrew Slater and Patrick Stacy, who handle player personnel and analytics.
“The way that they're able to sync together and kind of formulate those things is special,” Chambers said. “I was never a full believer, like, all the way in on analytics or all the way out—like the old school approach. I was kind of in the middle.”
But that changed after seeing the impact first-hand.
“Stacy showed me the baseball model of expected wins, and he was able to almost predict the number of wins that we had at McNeese the first year and then tinkering it in the second year,” said Chambers. “It was remarkable. The number of points produced on both ends was similar to what his formula produced. We've used that for this upcoming year. Honestly, I have completely gone in, all in on analytics.”
Still, Chambers acknowledges the complexity of basketball analytics and cautions against relying on a single metric.
“I don't know if there's one stat,” he said. “That's a great question. It may have its ebbs and flows based on teams. Every game that we go into, we have 11 game standards that we try to meet. If we meet a certain number of them, it's a guaranteed win.”