SAN ANTONIO — When Florida basketball senior guard Will Richard picked up his second foul in an Elite Eight game last Saturday against Texas Tech, he didn’t need to look over his shoulder to see if he was headed for the bench,
Under Florida Gators coach Todd Golden, the goal is to play a starter like Richard as many minutes as possible to maximize his impact.
Richard eventually picked up his third foul of the first half, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t foul in the second half and wound up playing 28 minutes, finishing with six points, two assists and a block during UF’s 84-79 comeback win over the Red Raiders.
Golden’s decision was part of an analytics-based philosophy that has helped lead UF to its first Final Four appearance in 11 years. The Gators (34-4) will face Auburn (32-5) on Saturday at the Alamodome on Saturday (6:09 p.m., ET).
Call this Final Four the revenge of the nerds. Duke coach Jon Scheyer is also a proponent of analytics, while old school coaches Bruce Pearl (Auburn) and Kelvin Sampson (Houston) have adopted some analytic principals in their approach too.
“It’s a macro-outlook on our decision-making and how we build out,” Golden said. “We try to gather as much data as we possibly can when it comes to any sort of decision, then make what decision that data tells us to make. Then we got to live with the consequences. It's not always going to work. Life is not perfect. You want to give yourself the best chance to be successful and live with the results.
“I think it shows great proof of concept. We try to bridge that gap also of being analytical while also using a little bit of a human element to make some certain decisions.”
Florida basketball analytics coach explains approach
Jonathan Safir has served as Golden’s analytics coach for a combined six seasons — first at San Francisco and now at Florida. Safir will be promoted to assistant coach at UF next season to help fill voids left by Kevin Hovde and John Andrzejek, who are taking head coaching jobs at Columbia and Campbell, respectively.
“It’s just of the backbone of everything we do whether it’s player evaluation identification, retention, recruiting,” Safir said. “To coaching with our hustle stats, and the analytics we look for in our shot selection our game play or our in-game management.”
Safir said the analytics are communicated to players in a way they would understand.
“Our players don’t really care if Christian Anderson can shoot 38% going left as opposed to 52% going right,” Safir said. “We just tell him, he’s better going right than going left. We know there’s an analytical undertone, analytical background, analytical being and rationales as to why we’re getting them to do this, they don’t need to necessarily know the specifics.”
There are no printouts to players or mountains of data to absorb on an iPad.
“The coaches do a great job of keeping it on the basketball level for us, they help us to just make the right reads and stuff like that,” Richard said. “They keep the analytics to themselves and kind of just push them on us in a way we can understand, make things easier.”
An example of UF’s outside-the-box thinking in game strategy occurred late ...
