The usual suspects often are cited when searching for the cause of college basketball's scoring decline: The game has become too physical, the pace too slow, defenses too packed in, and stars depart too quickly.
Division I men's teams are averaging 67.6 points through Thursday, just off the 2012-13 average of 67.5 points per game, the lowest scoring output since 1952.
But perhaps the salient reason scoring is down has nothing to do with size or talent or scheme. Perhaps it has everything to do with a proliferation of information.
NO SECRETS
Jason Richards enters a corridor of Petersen Events Center with a T-shirt and mesh shorts draping his broad shoulders and 6-foot-2 frame, the build of a former athlete. Richards once was Stephen Curry's running mate at Davidson. Few would guess he now runs Pitt basketball's nerd cave as its director of video and analytics. Still, he is sure this role is as good as any starting point toward becoming a head coach in the information age.
After college, he signed as an undrafted free agent with the Miami Heat in 2008 and briefly played in the NBA D-League. A torn ACL ended his career. It was with the Heat that he became fascinated with coach Erik Spoelstra's attention to detail and data and Spoelstra's start: working as a video coordinator.
At Richards' fingertips in the Pitt basketball offices is the Synergy Sports database, which integrates video and analytics on every NBA and Division I men's basketball player and team. He believes this scouting technology is playing a role in the college game's scoring decline.
“The analytics movement that started with baseball has filtered into basketball,” Richards said. “Game planning has gone to a whole new level. It's incredible what the software has done. … Teams are so well prepared for opponents now.”
Teams are so well prepared because of Synergy.
Synergy CEO Garrick Barr, a former video coordinator for the Phoenix Suns, founded the scouting service in 1998, creating reports off VHS-taped games. By 2008, he had streaming video and a small army of analysts breaking down games.
It was then that Synergy offered its sophisticated video-analytics package on a free trial basis to UCLA and Kansas. Kansas won the NCAA Tournament, and UCLA advanced to the Final Four. This season, more than 300 Division I men's programs subscribe to Synergy.
How detailed is Synergy's scouting database? Very. Want to know how often Duke forward Jahlil Okafor operates from his left shoulder on the left block? Synergy's Scott Mossman notes it only takes seconds to find such data.
“If you look at all of Okafor's left-block, left-shoulder hook shots, let's say he did that 73 times over the course of a season,” Mossman said, “we have all the analytics and video for each time he did it.”
Data often are cited for helping defenses over offenses. It is easier to isolate offensive performance and build a strategy to defend it. And because Synergy has proliferated to almost every Division I program, everyone has the same information. Said Virginia coach Tony Bennett earlier this season: “You cannot trick people now, not with all the great coaches in the league, with the Synergy, all the video.”
Said Richards: “There are no secrets.”
VIDEO ON DEMAND
It's not just the information; it's the speed of delivery.
Pitt coach Jamie Dixon is not a numbers guy. He is a video guy. He prefers to watch games from start to finish to see flow and when certain plays are run. He never has had access to so much video so quickly.
Last season, ACC programs agreed to use Synergy's video-exchange service. Teams are required to upload video of their most recent game two hours after the final buzzer.
Consider Pitt's game Feb. 21 at Syracuse. Pitt's next opponent, Boston College, also played Feb. 21, against Notre Dame. Dixon was able to watch that BC-Notre Dame game the same night.
Immediately after a game, Richards loads the next opponent's seven most recent games onto Dixon's iPad along with the just-completed Pitt game.
“Between waiting on the bus, the bus ride and getting back to Pittsburgh, I was already well into scouting (Boston College),” Dixon said. “You get more done in a shorter amount of time, and you have more games available. … In the past, if you were (scouting) a team and they played a game three days ago, you might not get that game. Now you get it immediately.”
So if everyone has the same science, where is the edge? Richards mimics how Dixon constantly slides his thumbs and index fingers on the iPad touch screen to stop and rewind video. There remains a human element. “He's rewinding, rewinding, stopping, taking notes,” Richards said. “His knowledge of the game is incredible.”
There also is an art in deciding in how much to give players so they are not overloaded.
There's only going to be more information as a handful of programs such as Duke and Louisville have installed the player-tracking system SportVU, a staple at every NBA arena.
It means the edge defenses enjoy today might only deepen tomorrow.
Travis Sawchik is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at tsawchik@tribweb.com or via Twitter@Sawchik_Trib.