Hey Davidson Basketball fans! Hey Davidson students who know nothing about basketball but want to become Davidson Basketball fans! Hey Davidson students who have no interest in basketball but love math and statistics! We have an exciting new series for you! Her Campus has partnered with Cats Stats in order to bring you exciting, interesting, and approachable stories about Davidson sports through a sports analytics lens. Now, don’t worry if math is not your thing or if you think they score touchdowns in basketball, we’ve got everything for the sports nerd to the occasional game-goer to everyone in between.
To get started with this series, we would like to introduce you to our partners in this endeavor: Cats Stats. Cats Stats is “a student group focused on empowering Davidson students interested in sports analytics while helping Davidson athletic teams,” says senior member Ross Kruse.
Cats Stats began in 2013 as an independent study with Dr. Chartier and seniors Mike Abbett (’14), Ford Higgins (’14), and Seth Kindig (’14). They originally wanted to help the men’s basketball team through the use of analytics. Today, the group still primarily focuses on the men’s basketball team, although now they have started working with women’s basketball, football, baseball, and women’s soccer.
One of Cats Stat’s primary goals is to provide valuable information to the coaches they work with. They regularly communicate back and forth with the coaches to make sure the information they are providing them with is relevant and useful. Cats Stats also remains focused on empowering students.
Dr. Chartier is merely the overseer of the group and is adamant that each student is able to “learn skills and be able to speak confidently about their work” at an interview or on a job application, according to Kruse. Students in the group are also given the opportunity to work with Dr. Chartier on his well-known March Madness research. He is often challenged with answering difficult questions, such as how to predict upsets or build the perfect bracket.
When it comes to men’s basketball, Kruse says Cats Stats provides “two scouting reports for every game they play.” They also chart all shots for home and away games on software called Shot Chart developed by Dr. Chartier. Finally, Cats Stats works to actively engage their fans–a new goal of the organization. Cats Stats wants to have Davidson sports fans engage with “the sport they love in an analytic way,” says Kruse. They have been using Twitter, websites, Jumbotron visualizations, and now collaborations (with us) to make this happen!
Students interested in getting involved with Cats Stats can contact Dr. Chartier.
If you are interested in writing an article for Her Campus Davidson, contact us at davidson@hercampus.com or come to our weekly meeting Tuesday at 8pm in the Morcott Room.