Baylor grad student serves ‘Moneyball’ role for Baylor men’s basketball
Ryan Resch, BA ’14, spent two years as an undergraduate as a student manager for the men’s basketball team. But as a political science major, he never envisioned himself having a career in sports.
After graduating with his bachelor’s degree, Resch initially continued his political science pursuits at the doctoral level, but he quickly realized that wasn’t the right path for him. He called men’s basketball coach Scott Drew for advice about what to do next, and that call brought him back to Baylor — as a graduate assistant for the Bears.
If you’ve read the book Moneyball (or seen the movie), then you know that analytics is all the rage in sports. These days, you’d be hard pressed to find a big league team in any sport that doesn’t have specialists digging into every bit of available data looking for information that can give their team a competitive edge.
For Drew and the Bears, Resch is that man. While pursuing his master’s degree in sports management, he also handles advanced analytics for the men’s basketball team. So what does someone like Resch look at besides obvious numbers like points or assists?
“For me, it’s about efficiency,” he says. “When you see a player who scores 25 points per game, everybody likes him because he’s scoring. But the question to me isn’t, ‘How many points did he score?’ It’s, ‘How did he do it?’ I’m looking for how many shots he took, or how many times he was fouled. I don’t ultimately care about the box score. We can garner enough information to determine what a player is worth per minute on the floor in terms of a point swing by factoring all the information we have out there.”
Resch has already created his own formula that determines the statistical value a player brings to the court on both offense and defense, taking into consideration not only points, but also defensive production, rebounding, the ability to draw fouls, and the level of production he brings with various combinations of teammates.
In games, Resch is on the sideline with the coaches, calculating lineup efficiencies. After the games, he gathers all of the statistical information from the game and runs it through his algorithms to create reports for the coaching staff. Drew and his assistants can then use the information to determine the highest-producing lineups and the most effective ways to approach certain parts of the game (such as offensive rebounding, or defense).
Resch acknowledges that numbers are only part of the equation for a winning team; after all, a successful coach like Drew has his own experience to draw from in building a winning team. But he loves what it says about the Baylor coaching staff that they want their assumptions challenged with data.
“Coaching is an ego-driven business,” Resch says, “and everyone thinks his or her way is right. It says a lot about our coaches that they would let a 23-year-old grad assistant provide information that could open their ideas up to being challenged. But they want that. We have a really progressive staff, and they’re so good to work with. How many other coaches would take the time to give life advice to a former manager and come up with something like this?”
Resch hopes to continue his analytics career in the NBA after he completes his master’s degree. Last summer, he interned with the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, an experience that led him to even more pro-level formulas and ideas to use for the Bears.
Sic ’em, Ryan!