Basketball Sportscode

The New Tool University of Washington Basketball Have Adopted in Their Search for Success

30 Sept 2020

3 min Read

As the new Hudl Sportscode now carries enhanced versions of the tools that teams loved in Sportscode v.11, it’s never been easier to make the transition and take advantage of the full power it has to offer.

University of Washington men’s basketball team is among the early adopters, making the switch before the start of last season. Video and analytics coordinator Aaron Blue shared how the Huskies are benefiting from the transition.

When taking care of video analysis during games, everything needs to run smoothly on a regular basis, allowing analysts to provide the coaching staff and players with a competitive edge over the opponent—possibly winning the game. In order to do that, every tool must run flawlessly.

“Higher quality video allows our coaches and staff to be more effective in seeing and analyzing the game,” said Blue. “We not only had zero crashes during the entirety of last season when capturing, but we also were able to capture in 1080p for the first time. The stability of capture gave our video operations fewer concerns to monitor the quality of our film. No longer was there a need to worry if a failure of a complete capture will occur, and even dropped frames became a thing of the past.”

University of Washington's Isaiah Stewart and Nahziah Carter. Credit: @UW_MBB Twitter

When last season was suddenly canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the team had to quickly keep the players engaged at home with the assistance of video analysis. As the lockdown continued during the summer, some new features available on Hudl Sportscode became even more useful for UW.

Standalone sorters and organizers speed up the clip sharing process with the coaching staff and players, delivering quicker review and presentation sessions.

“Standalone Sorters were crucial for us to continue working remotely during the pandemic,” said Blue. “File sharing over the internet was much more feasible. Also, sharing film via sorters cut down the process of collaborating remotely at an exponential rate. Without this option, some of our summer projects would have taken weeks instead of days.”

“Once our staff was comfortable with the new version, the opportunity to build on our processes with new or more stable features arrived. The implementation of multiple angles gave our staff the tools to see more of the game than ever before.”

Saving time in multiple processes was also one of the key things that convinced his team to transition from v.11 and never look back. With a massive workload and hours of footage to analyze, even the smallest gain in terms of time saved can be a huge help.

“Saving time in my workflow was the first thing I noticed after the switch, for example, importing now only taking a few minutes to convert video”, confirms Blue. “The saved time allowed for more allocation to applying video analytics to the program via the more stable output window functionality. More energy in output windows means more unique and team-specific analytics, that answers more questions than we’d ever had before and built a better understanding for who we are as a team.”

The Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion, home of the Huskies. Credit: ncaa.com

Time needs to be invested in order to fully embrace new technology, as happened to the Huskies with the new capabilities offered by the multi-angle capture on Hudl Sportscode. “Once our staff was comfortable with the new version, the opportunity to build on our processes with new or more stable features arrived. The implementation of multiple angles gave our staff the tools to see more of the game than ever before.”

“Staff adoption was one of the greatest challenges when we switched, especially when you have limited opportunity to walk through how the software changed. [...] However, understanding early how each coach is used to watch the film - and how he works with it - made it easier to get accustomed to the new version and start taking advantage of the improvements.”

Aaron’s Twitter: @AaronRBlue