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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Myles Garrett ranked as the top defender in the NFL according to top analytics company
Sports Info Solutions, one of the leading sports analytics companies in the world, recently published its top defensive players in the NFL. Browns star pass rusher Myles Garrett was the number one player in their rankings. The company relies heavily on using film to inform its data. Their 'total points' metric is a great statistic to track the effectiveness of individual players. The company recently discussed the best defensive players in a recent podcast. The podcast was split between the scouts, Bryce Rossler, and SIS CEO Matt Manocherian, a former scout for the Browns, and the stats, represented by James Weaver and Alex Vigderman. Both sides compiled top ten lists of the best defensive players in the NFL. The stats side used total points over the past three seasons to determine who the best players are. The scout side used their eyes and mouths to make their case. Both sides unanimously agreed that Garrett is the best defensive player in the NFL. The case was easy for both sides to make. Garrett has been one of the most productive players in football over the past three years from a statistical outlook. On the field, he's been the most dominant defensive lineman. He's constantly demanding offenses to double and triple-team him. And despite the efforts, no team has been able to stop him. Garrett was an easy choice for SIS to make. Listen to their podcast, Off the Charts, to hear the rest of the players in the top ten. This article originally appeared on Browns Wire: Myles Garrett adds another accolade to his list: named top defender
New York Times
16-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Ranking the 25 best college basketball teams of the 2000s: Which blue blood comes out on top?
Editor's note: All week, The Athletic is looking back at the best of the first 25 years of the 2000s in men's college basketball. Also read the top 25 players and top 25 coaches and submit your own picks. Upon receiving this assignment, a few teams immediately sprang to mind. The all-timers, basically. Some of the best collections of talent not just in the past 25 seasons, but in the history of college basketball. Advertisement Alas, 'off the top of my head' quickly proved to be a fallible strategy. But after some crowd-sourcing and a few guidelines, the pool of potential teams hovered around 40. From there, five main criteria helped whittle things to 25: • Overall record: Only one inclusion lost more than five games. • KenPom net rating: The sport has changed drastically since 2000, making standardized analytics a helpful sorting tool. Any team above a 30 — meaning it outscored opponents by 30 points per 100 possessions — is considered elite. Only two teams listed finished below that threshold, and only narrowly. • Conference championships: Did this team win its regular season, its tournament — or, ideally, both? • National championships: The 'best' team doesn't always win a single-elimination tournament, but it's undoubtedly a marker of greatness. • Historical relevance: The most subjective of the bunch, but how is this team remembered? It's an imperfect formula, yes. Some teams played 30 or 32 games, while others played 38 or even 40. But the results are nonetheless fascinating. Seven teams that won it all since 2000 notably do not appear below — meaning seven others that fell short of winning it all still made the cut. Along those same lines, some seasons have two — or in one case, three — teams included, while other years are omitted. On to the rankings. Top talents: Devon Dotson, Udoka Azubuike, Ochai Agbaji, Marcus Garrett Season result: No NCAA Tournament because of COVID-19 pandemic KenPom efficiency rating: 30.23 Would Kansas have won it all if the tourney had gone on? Dayton or San Diego State or Duke might've had something to say about that. But it's impossible to argue the Jayhawks weren't the favorites before everything shut down. In All-Americans Dotson and Azubuike, Bill Self had one of the most potent duos of his KU tenure. But Kansas also had an incredible cast of role players, many of whom — like Agbaji, Christian Braun and David McCormack — became the core of Self's 2022 title team. Two of Kansas' three losses were by three combined points, and the third came against fellow would-be No. 1 seed Baylor. Maybe this team didn't have the 3-point shooting to win it all, but we'll never know. Advertisement Top talents: Zach Edey, Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer Season result: Lost to UConn 75-60 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 30.62 If not for running into a buzz saw in the national title game, Matt Painter's best Purdue squad would feature even higher. Still, watching Edey — the first multi-time Wooden Award winner since Ralph Sampson in the 1980s — at the height of his dominance was something to behold. Edey's monstrous 37-point effort in the national championship game tied Lew Alcindor for fourth-most points in a title game in men's NCAA history. Alongside the 7-foot-4 Big Maple, Smith and Loyer combined to make the Boilermakers the second-best 3-point shooting team in America, one capable of going undefeated at home despite the nation's second-toughest schedule. The Boilermakers thrived despite the pressure of a season-long redemption tour, one year after becoming the second No. 1 seed to ever lose to a No. 16 (Fairleigh Dickinson). Top talents: Juan Dixon, Steve Blake, Lonny Baxter Season result: Defeated Indiana 64-52 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 29.25 A snoozer of a national title game, and over two decades of fading memories, should not detract from Gary Williams' only national title team. Behind Dixon, an All-American, and Blake, the national assists leader, the Terps and their fifth-ranked offense were a scoring juggernaut. Maryland outlasted eventual No. 1 overall seed Duke to win the ACC regular-season crown — back when that meant something — and rode Dixon's steady scoring to a second consecutive Final Four. Considering the Terps haven't advanced past the Sweet 16 since, this team's reputation has aged like fine wine. Top talents: Frank Kaminsky, Sam Dekker, Nigel Hayes Season result: Lost to Duke 68-63 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 33.72 No surprise, but 2014-15 is the only season in the last quarter century to yield three teams on this list. First up is Wisconsin, which owns as impressive a single victory as any team listed: its 71-64 win over previously undefeated Kentucky in the Final Four. It's far from the only reason the Badgers made the cut. Bo Ryan's offense was the country's clear-cut best and was key to Wisconsin finishing with a better efficiency rating than the Duke team that beat it twice. Kaminsky — the national player of the year, who finished top-five in total points and defensive rebounds — was the biggest reason Wisconsin completed a Big Ten regular-season and tournament sweep. The only thing keeping the Badgers outside our top 20 is not winning it all. Advertisement Top talents: Josh Hart, Kris Jenkins, Ryan Arcidiacono, Jalen Brunson Season result: Defeated North Carolina 77-74 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 32.01 'Arcidiacono, 3 seconds, at midcourt, gives it to Jenkins, for the championship …' An iconic call befitting an all-time moment: Jenkins' buzzer-beater that delivered Hall of Fame coach Jay Wright his first national title on the Main Line. While Jenkins' shot is what everyone remembers — erasing what appeared to be a double-clutch 3 by UNC's Marcus Paige only seconds earlier — don't forget how good these Wildcats were all season; Nova had a top-five adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency ranking, per KenPom. Maybe the best proof of the in-season growth? Losing to Oklahoma by 23 in early December, then smashing those Sooners by 44 in the Final Four. Top talents: Chris Douglas-Roberts, Derrick Rose Season result: Lost to Kansas, 75-68 (OT), in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 31.51 One free throw is how close the Tigers came to delivering John Calipari what would've been his first national championship. But Rose — the eventual No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft — missed his first of two attempts with 10.8 seconds left, keeping the Tigers' lead at 3, setting up a comeback for the ages, courtesy of Kansas' Mario Chalmers. Still: Memphis started the year 26-0, rose to No. 1 for the first time since the 1980s and was a 4-point loss to in-state rival (and then-No. 2) Tennessee in February away from entering the national title game undefeated. Behind All-Americans Rose and Douglas-Roberts, who combined for 33 points per game, the Tigers won their then-record 38 games by an average of 18 points per game. If not for choking away a nine-point lead with 2:12 left, Memphis might be in the top 10. Top talents: Jahlil Okafor, Tyus Jones, Quinn Cook, Justise Winslow Season result: Defeated Wisconsin 68-63 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 32.48 Advertisement Duke's defensive lapses — it did not win the ACC regular-season or tournament title — seemed to cap its ceiling. But Mike Krzyzewski's fifth and final championship team turned into a defensive juggernaut in the NCAA Tournament, allowing 56.3 points per game, or about eight fewer than during the season overall. Okafor's defense was a constant sticking point, but the All-American's post scoring and rebounding prowess more than made up for it. Cook was the stabilizing veteran on an otherwise one-and-done heavy roster, while Tyus 'Stones' Jones earned MOP for his clutch play late against Wisconsin. Grayson Allen's out-of-nowhere 16 points against the Badgers remains one of the most notable breakouts of the past two decades. Would this team have beaten Kentucky in the national title game? Eh. But it didn't have to! Top talents: Drew Timme, Corey Kispert, Jalen Suggs, Andrew Nembhard Season result: Lost to Baylor, 86-70, in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 36.48 This Gonzaga team was the first since Larry Bird's 1979 Indiana State squad to enter the national title game undefeated. The Zags — with three future NBA starters in Suggs, Kispert and Nembhard — were an absolute unit, and along with Baylor, were one of the two driving forces in the first 'post' COVID-19 season. Easily Mark Few's best team, Gonzaga averaged 91 points per game — the most in college basketball in over a decade — and throttled opponents by an average of 21.3 points. In fact, the Zags had only two single-digit wins all season: West Virginia in their third game and UCLA in the Final Four, on Suggs' halfcourt buzzer-beater in overtime. That said, Baylor led by as many as 20 in the title game — and scoring a season-low 70 points with history on the line does take off some shine. Top talents: Emeka Okafor, Ben Gordon, Rashad Anderson Season result: Defeated Georgia Tech 82-73 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 28.30 UConn has the most losses and the lowest efficiency ranking of any team listed, but that isn't representative of the talent on Jim Calhoun's second title team in five years. Okafor, the Wooden Award winner, and Gordon, who led the Huskies in scoring in the NCAA Tournament, made a top tandem— and appropriately went 2-3 in the subsequent NBA Draft. UConn won the Big East tournament, upset Duke in the Final Four and finished March Madness beating teams by an average of 13.3 points per game. Top talents: Dee Brown, Deron Williams, Luther Head Season result: Lost to North Carolina 75-70 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 32.68 Is this the best Big Ten team of the past 25 seasons? Almost undoubtedly. The Illini's only loss entering the national title game against UNC was by 1 point, via a buzzer-beating 3, on the road, in the last game of the regular season. Outside of that, Illinois' three-headed backcourt monster eviscerated teams, registering assists on two-thirds of its baskets and playing some of the most aesthetically pleasing basketball of the 2000s. Bruce Weber's team was also unkillable, rallying from 15 down twice in the NCAA Tournament: first, to beat No. 1 Arizona in the Elite Eight; and then to tie the score in the national title game with about 5 minutes left. But Illinois eventually was relegated to being one of the best teams ever not to win it all. Advertisement Top talents: Sean May, Raymond Felton, Marvin Williams, Rashad McCants Season result: Defeated Illinois 75-70 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 32.77 In 15 seasons at Kansas, Roy Williams developed the reputation of an elite coach who could never win it all, only to deliver his first of three national championships in just his second season at his alma mater. Williams inherited the bulk of this team from Matt Doherty's final recruiting class, but still had to make the pieces coalesce: May, the Final Four MOP; Felton, his first great UNC point guard; and McCants, a knockdown 3-point shooter. Williams, the national freshman of the year and eventual No. 2 pick in the NBA Draft, came off the bench. The Tar Heels led the nation in scoring at 88 points per game, outlasted Chris Paul's Wake Forest and JJ Redick's Duke to win the ACC regular season and knocked off an all-time great Illinois team in the title game. Top talents: Russ Smith, Peyton Siva, Luke Hancock Season result: Defeated Michigan 82-76 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 32.92 No matter what the NCAA says, these Cardinals are deserving of inclusion. In classic Rick Pitino fashion, Louisville had the nation's best defense, turning opponents over on more than a quarter of its possessions. Smith was a dynamic two-way star who carried the scoring load at 18.7 points per game, while Siva was the necessary tone-setter for a team that went nine deep. This team is maybe better remembered for its sanctions years down the line, or for Kevin Ware's gruesome leg injury, but it should be remembered as one of Pitino's best and most complete squads. Top talents: Walter Clayton Jr., Alijah Martin, Will Richard, Alex Condon Season result: Defeated Houston 65-63 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 36.46 Maybe the placement is influenced by recency bias. But also: Florida won the SEC tournament — emerging as the best team from the deepest conference in college hoops history — and survived the toughest Final Four in modern history, coming from behind against both No. 1 overall seed Auburn and fellow No. 1 Houston. Plus, Todd Golden's team was an analytics darling — its net rating is narrowly above those of two of our top three teams — and improved as the season went on, winning its final 12 games. Clayton, a former no-star recruit, turned in the best NCAA Tournament by any player since Kemba Walker, while Martin and Richard both had their postseason moments. Top talents: Jon Scheyer, Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith Season result: Defeated Butler 61-59 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 33.29 Advertisement This Duke team, despite winning the title, did not immediately come to mind. Further examination shows how strange a squad this was: Scheyer, Singler and Smith each scored at least 17.4 points per game while shooting at least 38 percent from 3, with basically nobody of offensive significance behind them. Brian Zoubek and the elder Plumlee brothers provided rebounding in the frontcourt, but no other team on our list is so top-heavy. Still, those three delivered, making the Blue Devils the only team in the country with a top-five adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency ranking. Between a shared ACC regular-season crown, a conference tournament title and sterling metrics — not to mention a memorable championship finish against Butler — it's hard to knock this Duke team for much (outside of aesthetics). Top talents: Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel, Khaman Maluach Season result: Lost to Houston 70-67 in the Final Four KenPom efficiency rating: 39.29 Duke didn't make the title game but had an overwhelming collection of talent. Cooper Flagg, the near-unanimous national player of the year, was the obvious headliner, but every other starter was also selected in the 2025 NBA Draft, including Knueppel and Maluach in the top 10. Duke had the second-highest net rating of any team in the KenPom era, behind only the 1999 Blue Devils, and beat teams by an average of 20.4 points per game. Even in arguably the most top-heavy season in modern college hoops history, Duke was the only team with a top-five adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency, per KenPom. All four of its losses were by 6 points or less — including its stunning season-ending collapse to Houston, in which it led by 9 with just over two minutes to play. Top talents: Kyle Guy, De'Andre Hunter, Ty Jerome Season result: Defeated Texas Tech 85-77 (OT) in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 34.22 One of the gutsiest NCAA Tournament runs in recent memory delivered the Cavaliers what coach Tony Bennett has since deemed 'the last amateur national championship,' before the onset of NIL and the transfer portal. Guy, Jerome and Hunter were program stalwarts who ran it back after infamously becoming the first No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16 (UMBC) the season prior. The Hoos turned that defeat into fuel, splitting the ACC regular-season title in a season in which three conference teams earned No. 1 seeds. Virginia's defense held teams to a national-low 56.1 points per game, but its clutch factor in the postseason is what endures. From Mamadi Diakite's buzzer-beater to force overtime against Purdue in the Elite Eight to Guy's game-winning free throws at the horn against Auburn in the Final Four, to Hunter's game-saving 3 at the end of regulation in the national title game, Virginia scraped by — and completed one of the ultimate redemption stories. Top talents: Al Horford, Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer, Taurean Green Season result: Defeated Ohio State 84-75 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 30.81 The second of Florida's back-to-back championship teams under Billy Donovan had few weaknesses, keyed by the nation's No. 1 offense and a trio of future NBA stalwarts. The Gators won both the SEC regular-season and tournament titles, and after losing three of their last five regular-season games, rallied to win the NCAA Tournament with little resistance. Their strength was balance; every starter, including sharpshooter Lee Humphrey, averaged double-figure points and played at least 25 minutes per night. By winning consecutive titles, the Gators did something no team had since Duke in the 1990s. Advertisement Top talents: Jared Butler, Davion Mitchell, MaCio Teague Season result: Defeated Gonzaga 86-70 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 33.87 Alongside Gonzaga, Baylor was one of the undeniable two best teams in America — and then it throttled the undefeated Zags in the national title game, delivering Scott Drew his only national championship and validating a decades-long rebuilding effort in Waco. The Bears started the season 18-0 before COVID-19 hiccups threatened to compromise their chemistry, as Baylor didn't play a game from Feb. 2 to Feb. 23. But Drew's team, led by its backcourt trio, rallied its defense in time for the NCAA Tournament — and reminded opponents why it started the season so dominantly. Between being the best 3-point shooting team in the country and the fifth-best offensive rebounding team in America, the Bears were a borderline unstoppable scoring unit on their best nights. Top talents: Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, Donte DiVincenzo Season result: Defeated Michigan 79-62 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 33.76 Even after losing three conference games in February, Villanova was easily the national title favorite for most of this season. Really. The Wildcats were that dominant, finishing a full 4 points better in efficiency rating than the next-closest team (Virginia) while winning the Big East tournament. With multiple contributors from Wright's 2016 title team — including Brunson, Bridges and Phil Booth — still around, Villanova stormed through the NCAA Tournament like few teams have done in the past 25 years. It won every March Madness game by at least 12 points, and its 17.6-point average margin of victory almost doesn't accurately depict how lopsided its wins were. The 2016 team is more memorable because of Jenkins' shot, but the 2018 version was simply better. Top talents: Brandon Rush, Darrell Arthur, Mario Chalmers Season result: Defeated Memphis 75-68 (OT) in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 35.21 Debate Villanova's inclusion if you like, but we're clearly into the 'all-timer' section of this list. Bill Self's first championship team was top-two in adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency, per KenPom, and its last two losses came on the road by a combined three points. KU started the season 20-0, outscored opponents by 19 points per game and had two flamethrowers from 3 in Rush and Chalmers — all before compiling an all-time NCAA Tournament run. The Jayhawks knocked off Steph Curry's Davidson in the Elite Eight, thrashed No. 1 overall seed North Carolina (and former coach Roy Williams) in the Final Four and outlasted John Calipari's Memphis in the national title game. And, yes, extra points for the all-time moment that was Chalmers' overtime-forcing 3-pointer in the dying seconds of regulation. The team that survived the first Final Four with all No. 1 seeds is more than deserving of this lofty ranking. Top talents: Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington, Danny Green Season result: Defeated Michigan State 89-72 in the national championship. KenPom efficiency rating: 31.14 Advertisement After falling short in the Final Four the year prior, UNC returned most of its core for one last shot at a title — and delivered a season for the ages. Led by the only four-time All-American in college basketball history, Hansbrough, the Tar Heels averaged a scorching 89.8 points per game and had the nation's No. 1 offense for the second consecutive season. Perhaps the biggest reason UNC got over the hump, though? Lawson's emergence as the ACC Player of the Year and an All-American; the 5-foot-11 speedster posted the best offensive rating in the country, per KenPom, and his eight steals in the national title game remain a championship record. Three of UNC's four losses came by 3 points — all of them on the road or at neutral sites — but this collection of talent was never in doubt. Williams' second title team was his best. Top talents: Willie Cauley-Stein, Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker, Aaron Harrison Season result: Lost to Wisconsin 71-64 in the Final Four. KenPom efficiency rating: 36.91 Yes, really: A team that did not play for the national championship made our top five. But if that's the only criteria, you're overlooking one of the most dominant teams in the history of college basketball. With 10 former top-50 recruits, Calipari had such an embarrassment of riches that he dared do something no college coach had previously attempted (or has replicated since): running separate five-man platoons. Kentucky allowed 54.3 points per game, making it one of just eight high-major teams in the past 25 years to hold opponents under 55 nightly. UK also had the nation's sixth-best offensive efficiency ranking; much of that stemmed from the Cats' top-10 offensive rebounding rate, keyed by Towns and Cauley-Stein. Kentucky came close to becoming the first undefeated team since 1976 Indiana, but ultimately went down with 1999 Duke as arguably the best team to not win a championship. Top talents: Tristen Newton, Donovan Clingan, Cam Spencer, Alex Karaban Season result: Defeated Purdue 75-60 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 36.43 UConn's only post-Christmas loss came at Creighton, when the Bluejays canned 14 3-pointers — one of the only ways to stop the Huskies' second consecutive national title team. For as good as the 2023 title squad was, it went through a lull in January and advanced through the NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed. The 2024 version had the nation's top offense, swept the Big East regular-season and tournament titles and posted the highest overall margin of victory (+140) of any championship team in NCAA Tournament history. As good as Purdue was, the season served as a six-month coronation of Dan Hurley's team, which did not trail for a single second in the second half of any March Madness game. Newton was the do-it-all point guard and deserving MOP, Clingan was the defensive tone-setting rim protector, Spencer was a knockdown 3-point shooter and five-star freshman Stephon Castle — the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year — was the fifth option. Top talents: Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Doron Lamb Season result: Defeated Kansas 67-59 in the national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 32.59 Reasonable arguments can be made that Calipari's only national title team is, in fact, the best of the last quarter-century. Behind 'The Brow' — who posted the best freshman season of all time, winning the Wooden Award, National Defensive Player of the Year and Final Four MOP — Kentucky was a relentless machine. The Cats won 14 games by at least 20 points, went undefeated in the SEC, held opponents to under 40 percent on 2-pointers — easily the best rate in America — and featured seven future NBA players. Kentucky's only two losses were the Wat Shot at Indiana in December, and 24 games later, the SEC tournament championship against Vanderbilt. The Cats weren't quite as dominant in the NCAA Tournament, winning their six games by an average of 11.8 points, but you're discussing greatness when you're critiquing margin of victory. The first 'one-and-done' championship squad in college hoops history forever changed roster construction. Top talents: Shane Battier, Jay Williams, Mike Dunleavy Jr., Carlos Boozer Season result: Defeated Arizona 82-72 in national championship KenPom efficiency rating: 37.32 One of the best college basketball teams ever assembled. Any conversation about these Blue Devils starts with arguably the most dominant set of college teammates in the last quarter century: Battier and Williams, two All-Americans who split every national player of the year award that season while averaging a combined 41.5 points, 10.6 rebounds and 7.9 assists per game. It took Herculean efforts just to stay close to Krzyzewski's third title team; Duke's first three losses came by a combined 5 points, two of them to eventual No. 1 seed Stanford and No. 2 seed North Carolina. The Blue Devils outscored opponents by an average of 20.2 points per game and swept the ACC regular-season and tournament titles — in a season the conference sent six of its nine teams to the NCAA Tournament. They won every March Madness game by double digits. Considering the results, the golden era of college basketball and the overall talent, it's tough to quibble with 2001 Duke as the best team of the past 25 years. Also considered: 2007-08 North Carolina; 2007-08 UCLA; 2009-10 Kansas; 2009-10 Kentucky; 2016-17 North Carolina; 2016-17 Gonzaga; 2021-22 Kansas (Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Mitchell Layton / Getty Images; Mark Cornelison / Lexington Herald-Leader / MCT; Jamie Squire / Allsport)
CNA
17-06-2025
- Business
- CNA
Sports software maker Teamworks valued at over $1 billion in latest funding round
Sports technology firm Teamworks said on Tuesday it was valued at over $1 billion after raising $235 million in a funding round led by Dragoneer Investment Group, as it looks to capitalize on the rise of analytics-driven strategies in sports. The trend toward data-driven decision-making in sports, popularized by Billy Beane of "Moneyball" fame, is fueling increased investment in analytics tools and partnerships, especially as U.S. universities take advantage of relaxed college athlete sponsorship rules. The latest round will help Teamworks advance its AI-powered offerings across professional, collegiate and Olympic sports programs. "As the sports landscape changes and as our customers' ambitions grow, this milestone provides significant resources to invest in innovation and world-class talent that will help them succeed," said Kyle Charters, chief financial officer of Teamworks. The Durham, North Carolina-based company provides a unified platform for communication, operations and performance analytics to over 6,500 sports teams worldwide, including all NFL and most NBA teams, according to the company. Teamworks has expanded its offerings in recent years through acquisitions, including its entry into the coaching space with the purchase of Telemetry Sports earlier this month. The latest fundraise, which was a combination of primary and secondary, comes two years after Teamworks raised $115 million in its Series E round.
The Guardian
03-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The Belgian lab shaping modern soccer's data revolution
If you hope to grasp why modern soccer looks the way it does, or the long strides we've made recently in understanding how it actually functions, it helps to know about what's been happening at one of the world's oldest universities, in Belgium. That's where you'll find the Sports Analytics Lab at the Catholic University of Leuven, headed up by Jesse Davis, a Wisconsinite computer science professor. Davis grew up going to basketball and football games at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and didn't discover soccer until college, during the 2002 World Cup. When he was hired in Leuven in 2010 to research machine learning, data mining and artificial intelligence, a band of sports-besotted colleagues brought him back to soccer. Before long, Davis was supervising a stable of post-docs, PhD and master's students working on soccer data. The richness and complexity of the data lent itself well to the study of AI. The work they produced, and made available to anyone through open-source analytics tools, substantially advanced the science behind the sport, and changed the way some clubs thought about playing. It may also serve as an example of how funding university research can benefit the public, including the businesses working within the field being studied; a potential parable for the value of academia at a time when it is being squeezed from all sides. In the early days of the analytics movement in sports, it was broadly believed that soccer didn't lend itself very well to advanced statistical analysis because it was too fluid. Unlike baseball, or basketball, or gridiron football, it couldn't be broken down very easily into a series of discrete actions that could be counted and assigned some sort of value. Its most measurable action, shots, and therefore goals, make up a tiny fraction of the events in a given game, presenting a problem for quantifying each player's contributions – especially in the many positions where players tend not to shoot at all. But while soccer was slow to adapt and adopt analytics, it got there eventually. Most big clubs now have an extensive data department, and there's now a disproportionately large genre of (eminently readable) books on this fairly esoteric subject. The Sports Analytics Lab published its findings on the optimal areas for taking long shots or asking whether, in some situations, it's more efficient to boot the ball long and out of bounds than to build out of the back. Some of those papers carried inscrutably academic-y titles like 'A Bayesian Approach to In-Game Win Probability' or 'Analyzing Learned Markov Decision Processes Using Model Checking for Providing Tactical Advice in Professional Soccer.' Wisely, they also published a blog that broke all of it down in layperson's terms. This fresh research led to collaborations with data analysts at clubs such as Red Bull Leipzig, Club Brugge and the German and United States federations. The lab also worked with its local pro club, Oud-Heverlee Leuven and the Belgian federation. But what's curious is that a decade and a half on, Davis and his team, which numbers about 10 at any given time, are still doing industry-leading and paradigm-altering research, like its recent work fine-tuning how ball possession is valued. Now that the sport, at the top end, has fully embraced analytics and baked it into everything it does, you would expect it to outpace and then sideline the outsiders, as has happened in other sports. But it didn't. 'Elite sport, and not just soccer, has an intense focus on what comes next,' says Davis. 'This is particularly true because careers are so fleeting both for players and staff. Consequently, the fact that you may not be around tomorrow does not foster the desire to take risks on projects that, A, may or may not work out or, B, will yield something useful but not in the next six-to-nine months.' There is innovative work being done within soccer clubs that the outside world doesn't get to see, because what would be the point of sharing all that hard-won insight? The incentives of professional sports strains against the scientific process, which values taking risks and tinkering endlessly with the design of experiments, none of which might yield anything of use. What's more, it requires highly skilled practitioners, who can be tricky and pricey to recruit. The payoff of that investment may be limited. And if it arrives at all, the output of that work may not necessarily help a team win games, especially in the short term. Meanwhile, most of the low-hanging soccer analytics fruit – like shot value, or which types of passes produce the most danger – has already been picked. What remains are far more complicated problems like tracking data and how to make sense of it. Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson Jonathan Wilson brings expert analysis on the biggest stories from European soccer after newsletter promotion You may find, for instance, that while expected goal models have become pretty good at quantifying and tabulating the chances a team created over the course of a game, they do not work well in putting a number on a certain striker's finishing ability because of biases in the training data. Yes. Sure. Great. But now what? What are Brentford (or his potential new club Manchester United) supposed to do with the knowledge that Bryan Mbeumo's Premier League-leading xG overperformance of +7.7 – that is, Mbeumo's expected goals from the quality of his scoring chances was 12.3, but he actually scored 20 times this past season – doesn't actually suggest that he was the best or most efficient finisher in the Premier League? What's more, when a club does turn up a useful tidbit, they have to find a way to not only implement that finding, but to track it over the long term. That means building some sort of system to accommodate it, which entails data engineering and software programming. On the club side, this kind of work can take up much, or most, of the labor in analytics work. 'For some of the deep learning models to work with tracking data takes months to code for exceptional programmers,' says Davis. 'Building and maintaining this is a big upfront cost that does not yield immediate wins. This is followed by a cost to maintain the infrastructure.' Academics, on the other hand, have less time pressure and can move on to some new idea if a project doesn't work out or there is simply no more new knowledge to be gained from it. 'I don't have to worry about setting up data pipelines, building interactive dashboards, processing things in real time, etc,' says Davis. The research itself is the point. The understanding that issues from it is the end, not the means. And then everybody else benefits from this intellectual progress. There may be a useful lesson in this for how a federal government, say, may consider the value of investing in scientific inquiry. Leander Schaerlaeckens is at work on a book about the United States men's national soccer team, out in 2026. He teaches at Marist University.
The Independent
29-05-2025
- General
- The Independent
Why this Man United team could genuinely get relegated
It won't happen this season, obviously, but Manchester United's form this season has seen them slip to the usually perilous 16th in the table. But what if Ruben Amorim's had been in charge all season? And what do the underlying numbers this season predict for them in the next campaign? Adam Clery lost his entire Sunday night making some spreadsheets to find out.
