8A — Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Three days to learn: Inside Michigan’s game preparation

On average, a college basketball 

team gets three or four days 
between games.

Three or four days to process 

the last game, get better, learn 
everything there is to know about 
the next opponent, teach it to the 
players, travel if the game is on the 
road, then go out and play. That’s 
a hefty order, especially when 
players have classes to attend.

This is how the Michigan 

women’s basketball team pulls it 
off.

***
The process starts at the 

beginning of the season. Coach 
Kim Barnes Arico and assistants 
Melanie Moore, Wes Brooks 
and Joy McCorvey sit down and 
split up the opponents, with 
each assistant assigned to scout 
a number of teams. From there, 
video coordinator Emma Golen 
— with the help of graduate 
assistants and student managers 
— gets to work.

Golen’s job is perhaps the most 

exhaustive of anybody employed 
by the program. Her title is video 
coordinator and, while she does 
put together film, Golen also 
helps compile scouting reports 
and track internal stats that 
determine how the team spends 
its time. She carries a binder that 
could be generously estimated 
at four inches thick, filled with 
numbers of every kind and sorted 
by tabs marking each game the 
Wolverines 
have 
played 
this 

season.

“The coaches will get this after 

the game,” Golden said, opening 
the binder. “They’ll get our lineup 
efficiencies. … All the lineups 
that were in the game, their plus/
minus, and then individually who 
was the best plus/minus. Then 
they’ll get a defensive efficiency. 
So the different defenses we were 
in, how well the opponent shot 
off of that, that type of defense, 
as well as a points per possession 
and their turnover percentage. 
And then our offensive efficiency. 

So the plays we ran, how we shot 
out of them.”

That’s not all. There are also 

individual shot charts for each 
player, 
breaking 
down 
their 

percentages from each spot on 
the floor, coded green and red 
based on how the player shot 
compared to the national average. 
Michigan’s offense and defense is 
split up by the type of possession 
— for example, transition — with 
numbers grading the Wolverines’ 
efficiency in such a situation.

This allows Michigan to self-

scout, finding its own tendencies 
and problems to fix after each 
game.

“I’ll do a lot (of self-scouting), 

just kind of what went well, what 
didn’t go well, did we run plays 
right, did we kinda follow the 
game plan,” Golen said. “Before 
games, Coach will have her goals 
for the game up there, so just 
kinda seeing if how we performed 
matched up with those goals and 
finding just little ways that we 
can improve and be better.”

Golen compiles much of this 

information during games, using 
an iPad app, SportsCode, to 
manually track the outcomes of 
individual plays. Not only can she 
record individual players, tapping 
a headshot of junior center Hallie 
Thome and then 
marking whether 
a shot was made 
or missed; Golen 
follows outcomes 
of specific sets 
and how they do 
against 
specific 

defenses. 
After 

the game, the data 
automatically 
links up with the 
game film.

The 
Wolverines 
also 
use 

Synergy, an analytics service, to 
find uber-specific stats.

“For like post moves, it splits 

up left block, right block and flash 
middle,” Golen said. “And then 
it’ll give the times that (players) 
turn left, times that they turned 
right, and when they turned left 
… a hook shot, an up-and-under, 

a drop step, the number of times 
they do that. And they break it 
down into percentages.”

Michigan uses self-scouting 

and data, in part, 
to 
figure 
out 

how 
to 
spend 

practice time. For 
example, 
after 

losing in overtime 
at home to then-
No. 8 Ohio State 
— a game they 
had a chance to 
win in regulation 
— the Wolverines 
practiced 
with 

a renewed focus on late-game 
situations.

“We spent a (lot of) time, end 

of game situations, making sure — 
not necessarily the right lineups 
that were in but everybody 
kinda felt comfortable playing 
with everyone in those kinda 
situations,” Golen said.

“Comfort in knowing your 

teammates, getting familiar with 
your teammates, making sure you 
know the plays, first of all. It’s 
different on the sidelines versus 
doing it in practice. And then next 
step, doing it in a game. There’s 
a (lot of) layers to kinda finally 
being able to be on the floor and 
do it right.”

At the beginning of the season, 

Golen was talking to a Synergy 
employee 
who 
told 
her 
an 

astounding number: 90 percent 
of Division I conference games 
in 2016-17 were decided by five 
points or less.

“So we kinda get in the 

discussion, like, your season 
comes down to maybe 30-50 
possessions that can win or lose 
you a game,” Golen said. “So with 
that comes BLOBs (baseline out 
of bounds plays), SLOBs (sideline 
out of bounds plays), and after the 
Ohio State game, we pretty much 
built into every practice was 
BLOBs, SLOBs.”

Between that loss to the 

Buckeyes and a win against them 
nine days later in Columbus, 
the Wolverines also focused on 
stopping Ohio State point guard 
Kelsey Mitchell, who dropped 39 
points in the first matchup.

“It was really important for 

(senior 
forward 

Jillian Dunston) 
to kinda see how 
(Mitchell) scored 
on her,” Golen 
said. “How she 
was able to kinda 
get in her comfort 
zone a little bit 
towards the end 
of the game and 
how she kinda 
took 
over 
that 

fourth quarter and overtime. For 
Jill and our whole team to be able 
to see that, (because) obviously 
it’s not just Jill’s responsibility 
to stop her. And just being able 
to bring that to the next game 
and improve on that and we were 
able to hold her under control the 
second game.”

That they did. Mitchell scored 

a comparatively-low 20 points on 
5-of-14 shooting from the field 
the second time around, and the 
Buckeyes fell short.

While fixing its own problems, 

Michigan is also, of course, 
preparing for the opponent itself.

***
As soon as the Wolverines are 

done playing a game scouted by a 

certain assistant, Golen starts to 
feed the assistant information 
about 
their 
next 
scout: 
a 

preliminary 
report, 
compiled 

through Synergy, detailing the 
team’s tendencies.

Some opponents will stick 

to those tendencies no matter 
what. Others mix it up, trying 
to find something that will work 
against the Wolverines. Iowa, 
for example, threw a triangle-
and-two defense at Michigan, 
putting its offense out of whack 
in what ended up being a 10-point 
Hawkeye win.

Since then, more opponents 

have flashed the triangle-and-
two at them — and the Wolverines 
have practiced going against it 
every day.

“That was the first time a league 

opponent did it and I think it kind 
of shook us a little bit,” Barnes 
Arico said. “I think since that time, 
we’ve gotten better and we’ve 
practiced more and we’re moving 
the basketball better on the 
offensive end. So I think it’s been 
a combination of it being thrown 
at us and our players improving as 
the season progresses.”

The end product comes in the 

form of a booklet, given to Barnes 
Arico, featuring detailed play-by-

play diagrams, a 
page of sets run 
by the upcoming 
opponent, 
the 

opponents’ recent 
box scores, best 
rebounders, 
3-point shooters, 
and 
free-throw 

shooters (as well 
as the worst free-
throw shooters).

In 
addition 

to a recently compiled scouting 
report, Barnes Arico will go 
through booklets from prior years 
as well. She finds it to be useful 
exercise, even if there has been a 
coaching or system change.

“Kids have tendencies,” Barnes 

Arico said. “So that’s the biggest 
thing in your preparation, is can 
you get ready for their tendencies? 
You know, and there might be a 
total different style of play, but if 
you can, you know, ‘Hey, this kid’s 
gonna pull up when they go left. 
This kid’s gonna try to go all the 
way when they go right.’ So you 
can practice those things.”

The scouting report is given to 

the players themselves through 
team-distributed iPads, on the 

app Just Play.

“That has all the scouts on 

there, all the film on there, player 
tendency, film, full-game film,” 
Golen said. “So kinda whatever 
they need, they have access to as 
well.”

While the assistant coaches 

are working on a given opponent 
well beforehand, players aren’t 
given this information until that 
opponent is up next. But that 
doesn’t mean they aren’t being 
prepared.

“I can incorporate some of 

those things in practice without 
them knowing,” Barnes Arico 
said. “So if we’re gonna play 
against an offense that we’ve 
never played against before, we 
only have one or two days to prep 
for it because of our schedule, I 
can incorporate that a little bit 
earlier. Or, like, press break stuff. 
So, if we incorporate that five 
minutes every day in practice, 
when we’re getting ready for a 
press break, we’re already used to 
doing that. But for the kids, they 
don’t know it until the last game 
is over.”

When it comes to film study, 

the coaches meet to decide what 
gets shown to the entire team.

“A lot gets shown to us that 

doesn’t get shown to them, 
because there’s just not that 
much time and the focus on that 
too,” Barnes Arico said. “So we’ll 
take probably five or six clips per 
individual player.”

On one day, Michigan will 

watch film as a team. The next, 
the Wolverines will split into 
groups, the specifics of which 
often vary.

“We’ll do some groups in terms 

of position,” Barnes Arico said. 
“And we can do groups in terms 
of the Maize team and the Blue 
team. So we try to vary it, so it’s 
different learning styles, can pick 
things up differently. Different 
voices among the group are good 
to learn with.”

Like learning the scouting 

report, 
players 
are 
also 

responsible for watching film 
at home on their iPads. By 
gametime, it’s on them to know 
everything 
from 
which 
way 

their matchup prefers to drive, to 
which plays will work against the 
opposing defense.

When the ball tips, Golen 

opens her iPad and gets to work. 
It’s time to start the process all 
over again.

MAX KUANG/Daily

The Michigan women’s basketball team has embraced advanced analytics, and it’s helped them to success.

ETHAN SEARS
Daily Sports Writer

CLAIRE MEINGAST/Daily

Michigan women’s basketball coach Kim Barnes Arico uses extensive scouting reports and video in order to prepare her team in between games.

RYAN MCLOUGHLIN/Daily

The Michigan women’s basketball team’s assistant coaches are assigned to scouting particular games.

“Whatever they 

need, they have 

access to as 

well.”

“A lot gets 

shown to us 

that doesn’t get 

shown to them.”

