Sixth Man

Five starters from last year playing against a half court man defense

Inspiration

As former and current athletes, we were inspired by our desire to contribute to Georgia Tech athletics and provide teams with the information that will give them the best opportunity to win.

What it does

This website allows coaches to see the projected offensive results of customized lineups against specific defenses before the game and in real time. The statistics displayed include projected points, offensive rebounds, assists, turnovers, and the offensive efficiency rating for the chosen lineup.

How we built it

We designed a sleek and elegant user interface using HTML and CSS. We complemented this front-end with a Javascript-based backend. Our code scrapes several sources to obtain robust information and leverages custom-built smart analytics to provide insights to the coach based on their selected configurations. We divided the code into several core functions and worked individually on components before integrating them.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into several challenges with our data gathering and analytics processing. Several functions in our code were asynchronous, which required a redesign for our function scheme because we did not anticipate a need to account for code running out of order. Additionally, Cross Origin Resource Sharing created a significant road block when accessing data that we eventually chose to resolve by moving some of our functions to Google Cloud where CORS permissions would not prevent data collection.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of finishing such an ambitious project in the time alotted. We are also proud of overcoming each unexpected challenge in our project.

What we learned

We learned about using asynchronous functions in JavaScript as well as handling Cross Origin Resource Sharing permissions in Google Cloud. Several of our members also learned how to use git and GitHub enterprise.

What's next for Sixth Man

We plan to incorporate a defensive efficiency component in order to allow coaches to compare lineups based on both offensive and defensive performance. Additionally, we will incorporate coaches' inputs for each player and record data from practices to yield more accurate results. Furthermore, video analysis software will be used to improve team statistics versus varying defenses. Wearable technology can additionally be utilized to record fatigue data and optimize lineups and personnel changes throughout the game. Our platform is designed to amplify team athletic performance by focusing on the individual and their dynamics within the team. This platform is not sport-specific, and can help to move all of Georgia Tech athletics toward even more successful results.

Built With

Submitted to

The Sports Innovation Challenge by Georgia Tech Athletics

Created by

I helped to design and improve the different algorithms used when pulling data and combining it the desired outputs. I also did research on other teams and player performances in order to make sure that the data and our results were accurate.

Jason Hentschel
I worked on the frontend, styles, and user interface. I worked on partitioning our javascript into functions and delegating the creation of those functions. I coded several functions and assembled the pieces into a functioning web app when all of the functions were complete.

Stephen Kalinsky
I helped build the algorithms in order to determine the different team statistics. I also used javascript to determine these statistics based on prior game statistics.

Nolan Knox
I helped to drive brainstorming and project decomposition. I also scraped the web extensively to gather robust data. I debugged production code and defined the logic for our data processing steps.

Jared Meyers
Ben Chuang