Lineup Data: How Coaches Find the Right Connections

Basketball is simply a sport that requires the right chem­istry. Sometimes cer­tain groups of play­ers per­form bet­ter with one anoth­er—your five most tal­ent­ed ath­letes may not be your most lethal combination.

That’s why line­up data is such an impor­tant sta­tis­tic. Even if that cohesion is easy to spot from the side­lines, it’s always use­ful to have the data to back up your hypoth­e­sis. With these metrics, you have that power.

“What I see in the data some­times points out errors in the ways that I think,” Rob Brost, head coach at Bollingbrook High (Ill.), said. ​“That is my first red flag, like ​‘Maybe I’ve got the wrong line­up out here.’ You can look and say, ​‘We had line­up A out there in crunch time and it wasn’t very effec­tive. But in the next game, we had a dif­fer­ent group out there and that group was much more effective.’”

How It Works

Lineup data, and all the information it comes with, is aggregated based on the combination of players you have in the game. 

Here’s an example of how lineup data is typically sorted.

Let’s say you have the ball with 10 seconds left, no shot clock, and a tied game. You call a timeout. If you look at the data, which of these lineups will give you the best shot at winning the game?

How Coaches Value It

When you’re in the heat of battle, you don’t always have time to make the right decision. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each lineup, backed by data, helps coaches know what substitutions to make for specific game scenarios.

“I’m used to watching film, but to able to break it down by player, the analytics have been amazing,” said St. Johns Country Day (Fla.) girls basketball coach Yolanda Bronston. “I know which lineup is my scoring lineup. I know which lineup to put in when I need steals. At the end of the game, when we need to hit free throws, I know the best lineup to put in for free throw percentage. We use it for everything."

Lynden Christian (Wash.) girls basketball coach Brady Bomber recalled a recent season where lineup data revealed a boundless energy level with a certain bench player. “She just made things happen,” he said.

“We just felt that this girl was an impact in the game at a high level, so we thought we might need to get her into the game earlier, because we might be missing out on a chance to start fast.”

Staggering her minutes better made the Lynx have better starts. And tinkering with this throughout the season helped them run to two straight state finals, winning one.

How You Can Use It

Not all competition is the same. Looking at your lineup data based on how you did against your best opponents can give you shrewd solutions to your pain points. Going back to the chart from above, if you have one chance left to win it in regulation, you’re probably going with the lineup that boasted both the highest effective field goal percentage and lowest turnover percentage, right? 

“That’s been a huge resource to us,” Bomber said. “Okay, let’s get out all the noise because that big win doesn’t tell us a lot about our team, and let’s look at these seven games and see what changes against the seven best teams we play.”

Don’t skip looking at the line­up num­bers for upcom­ing oppo­nents. A coach may have an objec­tive in mind when he or she goes with a cer­tain group­ing, and by look­ing through the num­bers, you can iden­ti­fy their thoughts and predict what they’ll do. 

For exam­ple, anoth­er team may deploy a small­er line­up that ratch­ets up the ball pres­sure and forces a lot of turnovers. A cor­re­spond­ing move might be to insert your stead­i­est ball han­dlers and a few big­ger play­ers who can crash the offen­sive boards.

Like most stats, line­up data alone won’t tell the whole sto­ry. It can help uncov­er some com­bi­na­tions that should be play­ing togeth­er more often, but you have to com­bine that with what you see and know as a coach. The Value Point System, for instance, gives you an over­all view of your most effi­cient line­ups, but oth­er stats pre­pare you for spe­cif­ic situations.

“You have to be open to infor­ma­tion that you’re get­ting,” Bollingbrook (Ill.) coach Brost said. ​“Sometimes what you think in your head is not accu­rate, but you go with it any­way because you have a feel­ing that might work on a giv­en night. You real­ly need to com­bine the infor­ma­tion that you get and the feel that you have, and some of that comes with experience. 

“It’s not a coin­ci­dence that in each of the last four years we’ve won 20-plus games. All of that has come when we start­ed to imple­ment and use the data to bet­ter eval­u­ate where we’re at.”

***

Fine-tuning your lineups takes time. But Hudl Assist cuts that time in half. Schedule a demo to learn how to get the most data out of your film in fewer hours.

Learn More | See a Demo

Already have Assist and want to get more out of it? Learn all the best tips and tricks with Hudl Academy.