Basketball analytics

Basketball

Shot quality, lineup combinations, spatial tracking, and possession-level storytelling.

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Lucas Pichardo

Basketball Co-Chair

Stats & Data Science · 2027

Raja Kavasseri

Basketball Co-Chair

Stats & Data Science · 2027

Workstreams

What this team studies

Shot charts

Translate location and efficiency data into clearer shot-quality and player tendency views.

Lineup interaction effects

Compare combinations, role fit, and possession outcomes across different groups.

Player role similarity

Use statistical profiles to find comparable players, team needs, and development paths.

Featured work

UCLA Women's Basketball Transfer Intelligence Report

An interactive five-tab dashboard built for UCLA Women's Basketball that maps transfer portal movement, compares first-year transfer vs. freshman on-court impact, and tracks career development across 8,300 freshman seasons and 1,354 transfer arrivals in Power 5 programs.

Problem

UCLA Women's Basketball coaches lacked a unified, data-driven tool to evaluate transfer portal decisions — specifically how first-year transfers compare to freshmen in immediate impact, and how outcomes vary by position, conference, and school.

Approach

The team built a web scraper pulling game logs and advanced metrics from Sports Reference across all Power 5 programs, then constructed a dashboard covering transfer flow, freshman vs. transfer comparisons, pre/post-transfer performance, career development arcs, and UCLA-specific patterns.

Result

The live dashboard gives coaching staff real-time access to transfer market intelligence, including Top-10 transfer origins and destinations, usage rate comparisons by position, and UCLA's standing in Big Ten transfer recruitment.

Open tool

Active projects

Current work

Consulting

UCLA Women's Basketball Transfer Intelligence Report

March 15, 2026

Women's Basketball · 2025-26

PythonPandasNetlify

Open tool Read paper

Research

Freshman Recruit Impact in Women's Basketball

March 15, 2026

Women's Basketball · 2025-26

A 2017-2026 women's basketball recruiting study that evaluates ESPN SC Next 100 recruits by freshman usage, minutes, conference and position distribution, Big Ten context, and transfer timing.

PythonWeb scrapingSports Reference

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Past work

Research

What Makes an All-NBA Player?

September 11, 2020

Basketball · 2020-21

A model of All-NBA selection using 10 seasons of NBA.com and Basketball-Reference data, testing variable-selection methods and logistic regression to identify the box-score and advanced stats most tied to All-NBA voting.

RPythonscikit-learn

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Research

Basketball on a Budget

June 14, 2017

Basketball · 2016-17

A salary-efficiency roster builder that ranks 2015-16 NBA players by position, performance, and cost, then creates an example low-cost lineup and shot-chart comparisons against elite teams.

Big Data BallSalary dataShot charts

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Research

NBA Player PER Report

December 15, 2017

Basketball · 2017-18

A PER ranking study that tests how touches, position, scoring, assists, and other player statistics explain PER rank across the 2013-14 through 2015-16 NBA seasons.

RRegressionANOVA

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Research

NBA Team Synergy Analysis

June 3, 2016

Basketball · 2015-16

An exploratory study of 2011-12 NBA playoff teams that compares Eastern and Western contenders, team touches, roster composition, and predictors of player rank.

Rt-testsRegression

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Research

Abolishing NBA Conferences

August 4, 2017

Basketball · 2017-18

A playoff-seeding study showing that NBA conference alignment excluded deserving teams in 12 of 15 seasons, then comparing wildcard, conference-free, and tennis-style bracket alternatives.

Basketball-ReferencePlayoff seedingSchedule analysis

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Team