![\"Ryan](\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/resch-nov16.jpg\")
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Ryan Resch, BA \u201914, spent two years as an undergraduate as a student manager for\u00a0the men’s basketball team. But as a political science major, he never envisioned himself having\u00a0a career in sports.<\/p>\n
After graduating with\u00a0his bachelor’s degree,\u00a0Resch 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\u2019s 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\u00a0Bears.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve read the book Moneyball<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(or\u00a0seen the movie<\/a>),\u00a0then you know that analytics is all the rage in sports. These days, you’d be hard pressed to find a big league\u00a0team in any sport that doesn’t have specialists digging into every bit of available data looking for\u00a0information that can give their team a competitive edge.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s basketball team. So what does someone like Resch look at besides obvious numbers like points or assists?<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it\u2019s about efficiency,” he says. “When you see a player who scores 25 points per game, everybody likes him because he\u2019s scoring. But the question to me isn\u2019t, \u2018How many points did he score?\u2019 It\u2019s, \u2018How did he do it?\u2019 I\u2019m looking for how many shots he took, or how many times he was fouled. I don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Resch has already created his own formula that determines the statistical value a player brings to the court on\u00a0both 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.<\/p>\n In games, Resch\u00a0is 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\u00a0the coaching staff. Drew and his assistants\u00a0can 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).<\/p>\n 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\u00a0building a winning team. But he loves what it says about the Baylor coaching staff that they want their assumptions challenged with data.<\/p>\n \u201cCoaching is an ego-driven business,\u201d Resch\u00a0says, \u201cand everyone thinks his or her\u00a0way 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\u2019re 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?\u201d<\/p>\n Resch hopes to continue his analytics career in the NBA after\u00a0he completes his master\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Sic \u2019em, Ryan!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ryan Resch, BA \u201914, spent two years as an undergraduate as a student manager for\u00a0the men’s basketball team. But as a political science major, he never envisioned himself having\u00a0a career in sports. After graduating with\u00a0his bachelor’s degree,\u00a0Resch initially continued his political science pursuits at the doctoral level, but he quickly realized that wasn’t the right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics","category-athletics","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}