Altamirano, staff bare importance of analytics in NU's UAAP Season 77 title run

MANILA, Philippines — Analytics, or "sabermetrics" as it was called earlier, has long been the domain in baseball. It has been immortalized in the book "Moneyball" as written by Michael Lewis in 2003, and its film adaptation in 2011. It has also found a home in football with Liverpool FC as one of its top proponents.

Six years ago, the National University Bulldogs, under the baton of head coach Eric Altamirano, made good use of it en route to the school’s first UAAP championship in 60 years.

"Paolo Layug did a lot of analytics for us during our years at NU,” bared Altamirano during the Usapang Basketball webcast hosted by this author last Tuesday, June 9. “It is where we based our defensive schemes and how we play.”

“Coach Eric was receptive to my offer of the use of analytics since he is a cerebral coach,” related Layug. “The first thing he made me do was to compare their games against UST when they lost. I did a study and it confirmed what he was thinking and it helped explain why they lost. From there, I became a part of the coaching staff.”

It was, however, a process, just like for the team as a whole as the players got used to a different way of analyzing basketball. “It was a learning process for everyone. Fortunately, Coach Eric gave me some leeway and I found ways to help the team.”

Added then assistant coach Mon Jose, “It (analytics) gives a different perspective and angle to the players. Now we got a lot of information from Coach Pao, but it all went to Coach E first then he filtered down what was important. It is not necessary to throw everything at the players because there might be information overload.”

Understanding tendencies has always been part of scouting reports, but crunching numbers helps back up game plans.

“For example, we noted that Kiefer (Ravena who was then playing for the Ateneo Blue Eagles) went 60% to the right and 40% to the left, so we tried to make him go left as much as we could,” added assistant coach Vic Ycasiano.

The pieces of information were also important in addressing lapses in their game.

“We had a tough time guarding FEU’s players like Roger Pogoy and Mike Tolomia, who always seemed to score off ball screens,” said Altamirano more specifically. “When studying that, we were able to make the adjustments in time and they helped us win the title.”

And those adjustments were made in time for the Bulldogs’ fourth knockout game that post-season that was Game Two of the UAAP Season 77 Finals, which NU won, 62-47. They closed out the series in comfortable fashion in Game Three, 75-59.

Layug’s work was tremendous for NU that the Alaska Aces’ coaching staff, then led by Alex Compton, tapped him to move up to the PBA ranks.

“There were a lot of factors in our winning, but Coach Paolo’s analytics were just as important to everything else,” summed up Altamirano.