How IWCC Men's Basketball Turned Film Hours Into Floor Hours
Aug 12, 2026
4 min Read
Iowa Western head coach Andy Shaw went from two-hour breakdowns and printed scouting reports to a same-night workflow that’s changing his program.
Andy Shaw doesn't just use film. He lives in it. Three seasons into his tenure as head coach at Iowa Western Community College, the first thing he thinks about after a game isn't the final score. It's getting the breakdown in front of his guys.
That obsession used to cost him something. Now it's paying him back.
The DVD Days
Before Hudl, game film was almost more trouble than it was worth.
Early in his career, Shaw was burning games to DVD and spending valuable time swapping copies with other coaches. "The next day, we'd have to drive 2 or 3 hours to meet another coach and exchange that DVD," he said.
Even once the industry moved on from DVDs, the manual workload didn't disappear. Breaking down a game meant watching the entire thing, "sitting there for two hours watching the entire game," Shaw described. Then came the printing. Physical scouting reports, color copies, enough for every player on the roster.
No access to an opponent’s film? You went in blind. For a coach who builds entire game plans around knowing what he's up against, it was a real competitive risk.
"If we don't have film on an opponent, I don't like that at all. I like to know what we are going up against," he said.
A Hudl Focus camera mounted in the arena records every game and practice. No student manager needed on the catwalk, no manual setup before tip-off. The moment the final buzzer sounds, the upload starts. "Our players can see it just about 10 to 15 minutes after our game ends," Shaw said. The program is already eyeing a second angle — and with it, the possibility of Hudl Focus Replay. "If we can add more angles that will help us, especially as we continue down the avenue of instant replay in our league," Shaw said.
Hudl Assist handles the breakdown. Within 24 hours, every offensive clip, every defensive clip, every turnover and assist is already tagged and sorted. What used to take two hours of uninterrupted watching now takes 20 to 30 minutes. "Every game that we play, I make between 40 and 60 edits from that game — we can be done in about 20 to 30 minutes," he said.
FastScout killed the printer. Shaw builds his scouting reports in the app, hits submit, and they go straight to players' phones, complete with personnel clips on every opponent. "In the past, I would have to print out the scouting report and players' physical copies. Now, as soon as I'm done, I hit submit and it goes right to the players' phones," he added. The suite runs deeper than game day: practice templates on Fastmodel keep daily prep organized, and FastDraw handles the playbook, diagrammed for the team to review. "All of those have been very instrumental in helping us be the best program that we can be," Shaw said.
The hours didn't disappear. They just moved somewhere better.
The Three C’s. And A Camera.
Shaw's program runs on the Three C's (Care, Commit, Compete), and film is how he enforces all three.
"Film doesn't lie. It shows where they need to be better as individuals. It shows us as a team where we need to be better," Shaw said. That accountability extends to Shaw himself. He'll own it on tape when he's wrong. That kind of credibility is hard to manufacture.
The same camera that holds players accountable livestreams every game, so parents who can't make the drive catch every possession anyway. Shaw's phone after a win is a flood. "When we win, I've got 50 text messages saying congrats. When we lose, I've got one text message from my mother," he said.
That trust travels. Shaw now scouts high school prospects from his desk without booking a hotel. The time Hudl gave him back didn’t go to the couch, it went back to the film room. His AD Shane Larson still has to walk in after wins and tell him to go home.
Arrow Pointing Up
Iowa Western men's basketball finished 23-9 last season, ranked No. 24 in the country. Three straight years of improvement. A national championship in their sights.
Shaw will tell you the wins aren’t the end goal. "We want to win games here. But at the end of the day we want to set them up to be successful people. Setting these guys up for beyond basketball is the biggest thing," Shaw said.
That's a program philosophy. Hudl is how he has the time and the information to actually execute it.
Andy Shaw's story doesn't exist in isolation. It's one piece of a department-wide commitment Iowa Western made when they went all-in on the athletic department package: one system, every sport, every coach building on the same foundation.
