Ahead of the Game

Scott Daughtry

As members of the UT men’s basketball team sprint from one end of the court to the other, Scott Daughtry is watching. He’s not watching the players, however—he’s studying a tablet that displays statistics from their wearable tracking devices.

Daughtry helps the coaching staff make real-time, knowledgeable decisions, as he alerts a coach when the tracking app notifies him a player needs a break. After a game, Daughtry applies analytical models to data collected from the tracking devices—and from a camera that charts shots and intensity on the court—to gain insights and inform future strategies.

Daughtry is a recent graduate of Haslam’s undergraduate business analytics program, and he’s slated to begin the Master of Science in Business Analytics program this year. As an undergraduate, he volunteered with the UT men’s basketball team and planned to major in sports management until he took a statistics class with Haslam senior lecturer Brian Stevens. “It made me wonder if the basketball team could do a better job applying analytics to the data they were gathering.”

Daughtry gained permission to apply analytics to team data, but the data was only accessible through an application programming interface (API). “I didn’t even know what that was,” laughs Daughtry, who connected with Haslam lecturer Adam Spannbauer for assistance. “I started stopping by Adam’s office, excited about applying the processes I’d been learning…and he’d explain how to get the data and what to do with it.”

Daughtry was highly motivated to learn to code, build predictive models, and create reports. He helped create a database that sources past performance statistics and created front-end apps that coaches can use to access that information. “I’ve worked to make the types of reports and capabilities they want. We’ve developed a custom platform for tracking and can create performance targets for each player every week.”

Last summer, Daughtry had another chance to learn more about analytics during his internship for the Indiana Pacers, a professional basketball team in Indianapolis. “It was a dream internship for me, getting to work for an NBA team and see what they are doing in the realm of sports analytics.” He brought back all his new knowledge to another season with the Tennessee Volunteers basketball team.

Daughtry will become a graduate assistant next year, as the men’s basketball team will sponsor his master’s degree. He’s excited to keep working with Head Coach Rick Barnes and continue building out the sports analytics platform. “There’s really no other team in college basketball that’s putting resources toward analytics right now,” he explains. “We’re leading the way.”