Thought this was a good write-up on our undervalued stats approach and where it was started. It’s from The Atlantic for anyone not using Apple News. The hulking national title contender with an Ivy League soul — The Athletic
Actually, it's from the Athletic (not the Atlantic, although both are very good). It's a terrific article that focuses on the core group at Columbia, led by Kyle Smith, starting in 2010. Golden played for Kyle Smith when Smith was an assistant at St. Mary's. Smith tried to hire Golden from the start, but he only arrived in Smith's third year. Many of the other coaches and staff from that Columbia program are now at Florida. Smith is the head coach at Stanford. They were among the first basketball coaches to conceive of and implement a data-driven approach to the sport. Think Moneyball, but a lot harder to tease out from basketball stats than from baseball.
And here is an article from today's Wall Street Journal on Golden (link is free). It mentions his data driven approach and uses the example of how willing he is to leave players in the game if they get a 2nd foul in the first half. The data say don't take them out. Billy Donovan used to be religious about sitting a guy with two fouls in the first half. It used to drive me nuts. You are basically accepting a 100% chance of the guy having to sit on the bench, when it's not clear he'd end up fouling out in the 2nd half anyway. https://www.wsj.com/sports/basketba...9?st=94iZZQ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Please bookmark this site to view things behind paywalls https://archive.is/ Athletic article without paywall https://archive.is/KbZFV
The very first thing Stricklin needs to do when Golden gets back is sit him down for a contract extension and expansion. Have it ready by the time the team lands back from San Fran. At the very least, make sure he's in the top 10 of coaches in CBB salary, which according to my quick google is Nate Oats at Alabama at 5 Million. (For reference Todd Golden makes about 3.4 Million and is #34 right now) To make sure we are in the top 10 at the end of this carousel, we should offer 6 Million IMO, as well as to make sure he's paid better than Bruce Pearl (5.9) and Rick Barnes (5.8). He also needs substantial increases to his bonuses as his bonus was the the 2nd lowest to make the Elite 8 IIRC. Go ahead and pay him like we're locking down the next Donovan, Roy Williams or Coach K. Because we probably are, and with his specific style of basketball he could have one the biggest and most influential coaching trees in the game of college basketball ever.
Similar in WSJ https://www.wsj.com/sports/basketball/florida-todd-golden-final-four-452081b9 Archived https://archive.ph/z11md
Had no idea Koby Altman was on that first staff. He’s presided over a pretty massive rebuild/turnaround in Cleveland. That’s a good contact for Golden to have. But hopefully not *too* good.
Having gone through grad school around this time at Columbia, my biggest takeaway from this article- which was great BTW - was not finding Tap-a-Keg while I was in school.
