Illinois Men’s Basketball is in the midst of a golden era – recently even featuring a trip to the Final Four. It’s a proud program with a storied history that’s hit the big stage, largely by doing the little things right along the way.
That includes their video analysis. Seven years ago, staff members Zach Hamer and JC Keller set a vision of making video and data a seamless, indispensable asset to the program by centralizing the operation onto a single platform.
“It’s been a big priority of ours to make our workflow as single-platform as possible,” Hamer says. “And obviously with Hudl’s acquisition of Fastmodel, that’s kind of made that pretty possible for us as well.”
From scouting to game day to player development, here’s the workflow behind one of the Big Ten’s most analytically sophisticated programs.
Video and Data Are Inseparable
At the core of Illinois’s approach is a simple conviction: There’s no room for video without data or data without video.
“Just being able to have all of our video tied to data and data tied to video is probably the key point of it all,” Keller says. “Having that living archive and being able to document and archive that the best we can.”
That architecture starts in the scouting process. Games come in through League Exchange and Competition Database, get coded with the program’s own tags, and flow directly into game day preparation. Everything lives in one place, with no platform switching or re-exporting.
Introducing the “Remote Environment”
Hudl Replay runs on the bench during every game, with staff live-coding from multiple positions. But the way Illinois uses it in practice is equally intentional.
“We provide individual feedback without the need to stop practice,” Hamer explains. “There’s a time where showing your whole team video on the court makes sense, and then there’s a time where showing an individual player video from that practice session makes sense.”
On the sideline, Replay enables something Hamer calls a “remote environment.” If a coach wants to see something, it’s there. Clips tagged during the game feed directly into halftime edits without interrupting the live-coding workflow. And when the NCAA changed its rules to allow video review at halftime, Illinois was ready.
“There have been several times, both on offense and defense, where we’ve shown clips at halftime, our guys have done the thing we weren’t expecting them to do again later in the game, and we’ve handled it as we hoped,” Hamer says. “I love the term ‘coaching option’.”
Track What Matters. Ignore What Doesn’t
JC Keller has spent years building custom output windows inside Hudl Sportscode - and the philosophy behind them is as important as the windows themselves.
"Just because you can have an output report for something doesn’t mean you need an output report for it."
What started with simple tempo-free statistics evolved into pre-game, in-game, and post-game reports that track process metrics alongside the box score - the things that aren’t counted globally but matter to Illinois specifically.
"Anyone can look at a box score and get a good sense of what is and isn’t working,” Hamer says. “Being able to keep track of our process in real time, in a way that everyone in our program can understand and digest quickly and make informed decisions - that’s been a great change.”
At every media timeout, the staff prints a one-sheet report. It’s a focused, detailed look at what’s going to move the needle in the next four minutes. Nothing more, nothing less.
The Automatic Tagging Unlock
Zach Hamer didn’t always trust automated tags. He came up tagging everything manually, and when Competition Database’s automated tagging arrived, he was skeptical.
“I wanted all of our guys coding everything manually,” he admits. “But the progress that’s been made in the last five years with the tags and with the competition database is unbelievable. It totally changed our process.”
That trust unlocked real capacity. Hours of manual cuts turned into meaningful time for player development, individual film sessions, and the kind of work that requires a human in the room.
Every Minute Counts
Neither Hamer nor Keller will point to one moment where Hudl “saved the day.” That’s not really how it works.
"It’s not that you save a whole day’s work in one day. It’s that you save 15 minutes over the course of an entire week or season - and that adds up into something else you were able to spend your time on."
For Hamer, that something else is usually players.
“Any moment we can spend with our players is gold,” he says. “Being able to save some time there allows us to have more time with our guys on the court, more time watching film together, more time just spending time with those guys and helping them learn and process the game.”
Hamer and Keller continue to refine Illinois’ system, tinkering with new tasks and workflows that save more time and unearth more insights. The key? Hamer tells it simply: “We don’t need to live with the inconveniences. We don’t need to do that anymore.”
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Illinois Men’s Basketball uses Hudl’s full suite - including Sportscode, Hudl Replay, Competition Database, Fastmodel, and custom output windows - to manage film, scouting, analysis, and recruiting workflows. To learn more about how Hudl supports D1 basketball programs, visit https://www.hudl.com/solutions/professional/basketball
