"Loved reading your book on analytics. I started using vps 6 years ago to give me another tool to analyze playing time. Your book opened me up to the value of PPP which I had never considered. I also have used a lot of color coded shot charts to help our shooters." - Derek Scott, Illinois "I am currently a senior in high school who is interested in basketball stats and analytics. I am currently reading your high school basketball analytics book and I love it!" - Dylan Lutey, Philadelphia, Pa. "Congratulations on you book, High School Basketball Analytics. I loved to read it and I learned a lot about analytics." - Roger Dehesa, Spain In basketball, two numbers matter above all others: your score and your opponent’s score. Some purists might argue that these are, in fact, the only numbers that matter, and all others are useless noise created by nerds who could not cut it on the court. But ignore math at your own peril -- you might be missing out on a powerful competitive advantage. In High School Basketball Analytics: Using Advanced Statistics to Give Your Team an Advantage, a high school basketball coach goes in-depth on non-traditional metrics and other data that can help reveal your team’s strengths and weaknesses, keys to winning and losing, and more. Learn how one team incorporated analytics into its program and how you can do the same. "Loved reading your book on analytics. I started using vps 6 years ago to give me another tool to analyze playing time. Your book opened me up to the value of PPP which I had never considered." -Derek Scott, high school coach Excerpt On a lazy Sunday during the Fall of 2020 I received a text message from my son's varsity basketball coach gauging my interest in coaching the school's JV2 team that winter. I was interested but hesitant. A primary motivation for getting more formally involved with the high school program would be to spend more time around my older son Will, who was a varsity player, and historically the JV2 and varsity teams practiced and played in separate gyms. But after it became clear I would also be able to work with the varsity team, I agreed. Before the season our coach, Sam, met with me and our new junior varsity coach, Mark to talk about the upcoming season. Sam asked what we would be interested in focusing on. "Defense," said Mark. We're glad he did -- that season we were fantastic on that end of the court, as talent and effort combined with technique and preparation to give our team a stymying defense. When Sam turned to me, I was momentarily speechless, having not considered the question beforehand. But the answer came quickly. "Scouting ... and analytics." The first response was natural and unsurprising. Ever since I had gotten involved coaching Pop Warner football, scouting had been something of an obsession for me. I love learning everything there is to know about the teams we will play, their players, their strategies, everything. Beyond the competitive reasons for doing this, scouting has also made me a better coach. At a basic level, coaching is thievery, taking good ideas from another source and adapting them to your program. Whether it's watching an NBA game, reading a blog post, or watching a high school game on Hudl, there is always something to learn. The second response surprised me. But not Sam, who had been Charlie's teacher when he worked on the Player Efficiency Rating project, as well as an essay on Sam Hinkie's tanking strategy while general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers. "Not surprised coming from a guy whose kid wrote a paper about 'The Process,'" Sam laughed, also suggesting that I focus on rebounding. Awesome. Where to start? Preparing the scouting system came naturally, just formalizing and expanding things I had done in the past. But analytics? Even given all the time spent learning and thinking about the subject, I was still at a loss for where to begin putting together information that would be useful to our players and coaches. Staring at a blank laptop screen, I turned to a trusted source for clearing roadblocks. Scott Tappa is a football, basketball, and baseball coach in Iola, Wis. In addition to serving as coach, he was president of Iola-Scandinavia Pee Wee Athletics and the Mid-State Youth Football & Cheerleading Conference. He is a business education teacher at Iola-Scandinavia High School. After beginning his career as a newspaper sports editor, he worked in a variety of magazine, book, and online capacities before landing at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where he worked in a marketing, communications, and events position, and founded the Great Lakes Analytics in Sports Conference. Scott is married to Jana and father of Will and Charlie.