If you coach at the Varsity level in basketball game, you've probably either heard of Hudl (or Krossover, which I have not used) or have been given access by your AD. This is a review of Hudl for apply by basketball coaches on how it tin can help with capturing, editing and analyzing game pic and statistics. The review is based on our utilize of it at Saugus High School during the 2016-2017 Girls Varsity basketball game season.

Below, I'll requite an overview of:

  • What Hudl Does for Basketball game Coaches
  • Our Process Before and Afterward Hudl for key functions
  • Benefits and Weaknesses of Using Hudl

What Hudl Does for Basketball Coaches

Hudl is a game motion picture software platform that enables you to upload, tag, cut and share video with your players also as publish team highlights online. It's i of a few software tools out there to upload and tag game motion-picture show for basketball.

In general it will help you with the following:

  • Capture and centrally shop practice and game film to brand available to your coaches and players
  • Create highlights and cut video for private and team apply including automated highlights created for players based on tags
  • Easily tag stats for both your team and the opponents
  • Report on squad and individual stat reports including game summaries, flavour stats, shot charts, etc.

In brusk, it helps y'all to centrally shop your game picture show to share with players and coaches while providing like shooting fish in a barrel ways to tag the game for cutting video clips or highlights and tracking overall individual and squad stats for you and your opponent.

At Saugus High Schoolhouse, we received apply of the Hudl tool since the Football team uses it and the schoolhouse bought a license. This was our kickoff year using Hudl for game film.

For the iii years previous, we had used a combination of Youtube and Google Spreadsheets to share game movie, create highlights and track stats.

Let'due south go through what each of these looked like before and later on Hudl for us at Saugus.

Game Film Capture, Editing and Sharing

Before Hudl

For every game, Mark, our head coach, would provide a camcorder to our team managers or fellow member of the JV team to record our game. He'd accept the film, upload the video to his figurer then would upload to a Youtube account for coaches to view the moving-picture show (see below).

Video Basketball

In many cases, uploading twice (once to calculator and so Youtube) could take ii-3 days to exist available to coaches. To cut that film into highlights for the players, Marker would typically employ iMovie to create shorter video clips that he would upload to Youtube for use before practices for players.

In summary, we had the following bottlenecks for game film:

  1. Making the game film bachelor to coaches took too long (peculiarly when we had a 3 game week)
  2. Cutting film for the team much less for specific players was cumbersome and time consuming.

After Hudl

We utilise the Hudl iPad app to capture all of our games. Our team managers or a member of the JV team usually records the game via an iPad nosotros supply. We had used a camcorder just overall the Hudl iPad app enables us to easily record and most importantly hands upload the game picture show to the Hudl site once the iPad makes information technology to WiFi. Typically, we can go the game movie upwards and available the night of the game.

Afterwards the video uploads, it is fabricated bachelor to all players and coaches and we can brainstorm tagging the game (see more on that below). Every once in a while we experience a lag in the moving-picture show but overall the app performs only as good as the camcorder does with final upload.

We played with the video highlights and playlist a lot over the flavor and what we ended with is this:

  • Tagging: I'll get into what tagging entails below but basically this enables united states of america to become through the film easier by tagging the central plays happening throughout the game. I as well like the characteristic where you tin get to all video clips that correspond with stats past clicking on the links for the stat numbers with a single click.
  • Sharing Video: We leverage the sharing feature with opposing coaches on occasion to share scouting film simply do non use this characteristic all the time.
  • Automatic Highlights: If you finalize the tags for your games, automated highlights will be created for the players and the game based on rules (it usually pulls clips tagged for double doubles, multiple steals, blocks, buzzer beaters to name a few). While these aren't terribly instructive, the players like to view their highlights and it'south absurd that this requires no work to do other than tagging.
  • Team & Player Highlights: These highlights are ones you can designate while watching film to potentially include in external highlights for a player or team. The problem with these is moreso that they are congenital for positive plays vs. educational activity film and at that place are problems that make it a bit cumbersome to use at the moment which I'll get to below in "weaknesses".
  • Playlists: This feature enables you to group snippets of film together under a specific category (i.eastward. specific inbound plays or sets). Afterwards playing around with playlists, nosotros ultimately came to the following every bit the easiest and best solution for using these as educational / pump up videos for our players. Here'southward what we did:
    • For each player we created a playlist with their name (i.e. Allie One thousand or Rachel Due north). As nosotros watched the game film, the coaches were able to add highlights to these playlists which we shared with the players. The highlights were a combination of recognizing great plays and areas of improvement. Hudl'due south bulletin and writing tools aid to provide instruction on the video clips which we used to communicate with the players on each highlight.
    • This worked pretty well overall as it gave us some other method of communication with players that they could watch on their own time and showed them in game points of emphasis. This was independent of game picture show we'd evidence before practices to the full team.

Hudl Video Highlights

The Divergence

There were a few main differences before and afterward Hudl.

  1. Game Picture show Turnaround Time Decreased Significantly: We accept reduced the film turnaround time from two-3 days to it beingness uploaded the same day in most cases. We also accept made a consequent effort to record and upload all games which didn't e'er happen earlier.
  2. More than Player Specific Film: As we mentioned with Playlists, nosotros've been able to produce more clips to aid motorcoach players based on their in-game play. This was peachy way to emphasize success and areas of improvement without taking upwards practice or movie time with the whole team.
  3. Players Create Their Own Highlights: This is a feature that only a few of our players have used but Hudl enables players to create their own highlights and is a feature that I believe more players will take reward of in the future.

Tracking and Analyzing Stats

Before Hudl

This is our fourth year coaching at the varsity level and we've been condign more and more sophisticated in how we use stats to understand and validate our thoughts on the team and players. Our offset few years, nosotros only kept points stats and some rebound statistics from the book. The last two years with film, we've evolved into tracking everything from the box score equally well every bit some advanced metrics that we can utilise to clarify progress and players.

I like spreadsheets and equally such I put together a whopper to rails all of our stats from our games. To measure the stats I tracked manually while watching game film for all players. I then put in the stats for individual games into split tabs for all players and had it flow into subsequent Total tabs for actor stats and overall team stats. The spreadsheet was over xxx tabs (run into below)!

First off, this spreadsheet was cumbersome. Not just was it relying on my manus counts watching film just it was also relying on me not making a fault in the formulas of the spreadsheet. It was still very useful just far from platonic.

*And you'll also find that we didn't have all the game stats. Which is something we've cleared up with Hudl.

After Hudl

This season we went through and tagged every game in one case information technology was uploaded into Hudl. Tagging requires you to go through the game and tag every statistic for every role player for both your opponent and your team. Information technology's pretty intuitive and I actually enjoyed doing it as I watched dorsum the game film as I got a better sense of how our players and team played.

Tagging a single game in Hudl took near ii – 2 ane/2 hours to do so it is a delivery. Still, once tagged information technology does all the work for you in terms of accumulating the statistics for each player and game summary. With our game films tagged nosotros would look at the post-obit:

  • Player operation to appointment: We were able to meet the operation of our players based on advanced stats and things such as Plus Minus, which we never had before. We were also able to share stats with players on their season.
  • Game Summaries: For each game, the summary was very useful for us as we decompressed from a win and a loss to determine what we or the opponent did that led to the event.
    • For case, in one of our losses, we realized that our opponent shot fifty% from the floor and 40% from 3 in a 1 bespeak loss. While at that place were things we definitely worked on from that game, we could also chalk it up to a team that had the best game of their season on shots they don't usually hit (which we know from watching scouting film).
  • Quarter Analysis: This was a big ane for us as nosotros realized that in our games nosotros were greatly outscoring teams in the quaternary quarter. This isn't besides surprising as we are a deep team and we play fast which often tires teams out but it was adept affirmation in our strategy and great halftime and finish of the 3rd quarter content that we used a ton with the squad.

Hudl Reports & Analytics

In short, Hudl has helped us get to where we wanted to exist while making information technology easier to compile and view other metrics that we weren't able to mensurate before. It helped the states inform actor evaluation, areas of emphasis and to test our assumptions on the team.

Benefits and Weaknesses of Hudl

Overall, Hudl has been a tremendous tool for u.s.a. to organize both our game movie and our statistics. It has saved the states hours on doing what we had to practice manually and helped to better betrayal this piece of work to our players. That being said, at that place are still a few things I'd similar to see Hudl improve in the tool to make it fifty-fifty better (and can tell you the Hudl team has been very open up minded and attentive to these requests.)

So here are my major benefits and weaknesses:

Benefits

  1. Saves Time on Film: It profoundly reduces the fourth dimension to make game film available and centralized. This is huge for our squad and if you don't use game flick, I'd highly recommend you start!
  2. Deeper Stats & Analytics: While it doesn't provide everything I'd want (I'd like the power to tag custom plays) it provides the box score and more avant-garde analytics that help us evaluate our team and opponents. This helps us make up one's mind game plans, areas of improvement and test assumptions in a way that is informed.
  3. Player Involvement in Film: This will definitely become more adopted the more we apply Hudl only information technology enables our players to access the same film as the coaches and for coaches to share pic with players outside of practice and games. It's a helpful tool for targeted video for players.

Weaknesses

  1. Highlights are still clunky: I've spoken with the Hudl team on this and I believe at that place are updates happening here but the Highlight and Playlist functionality is a flake clunky right now (every bit of March 2017 this year). We gerry-rigged the process we utilize higher up but think in that location could exist improvements in the following:
    1. Tag Clips for Highlights and Playlists while Tagging: Right now you tin either Tag stats or Cutting Clips but you can't do at the same time. This requires you to watch the game twice and is very inconvenient.
    2. Tag a Prune In one case for use in multiple Highlights or Playlists: If say I want cut a clip for use both with the entire team and for a specific player playlist, I have to cut the prune twice. It'due south a existent pain and could exist easier if in that location was a central prune repository to pull into highlights or playlists for final viewing.
    3. Playlists cannot exist organized: Playlist clips are organized past the fourth dimension you add them to the playlist. In that location currently is no way to organize or move clips to a unlike order after the fact. That'south non likewise big of a trouble with the player highlights we pull but is a problem when showing a playlist on a specific criminal offense or play that we want to exist organized together into good and bad.
  2. Consign Stats & Data: I'd like the ability to hands export data from Hudl for putting into spreadsheets. I've done this through copy and paste simply would exist useful to dig into information even further.

The strengths of Hudl far outweigh the weaknesses equally the weaknesses are nitpicks from a power user category that I doubtfulness many would fall into. I'g not sure what we would do without it at Saugus.

I highly recommend Hudl every bit information technology will assist you see your team and games in a dissimilar lite and if you put the time in, ameliorate empathize success and failure for your squad.