Podcast Transcript | Jordan Sperber
Transcript of the PlayAction Pod episode with HoopVision's Jordan Sperber
Welcome to the PlayAction Pod. The podcast for PlayAction Pools.
PlayAction Pools is preparing to launch this year as the newest Office Pool Hosting site for all of your Office Sports Pool needs.
In the meantime, we're going to be delivering Office Pool-related content in a variety of ways. Follow us on Twitter @PlayActionPools.
In addition to written content, we're starting this podcast. I'm your host Christian McCollum.
We have an amazing guest for our debut episode. Jordan Sperber is the creator of the HoopVision Newsletter, which provides unique insight into the world of College Basketball. Jordan does deep statistical and analytical dives into the sport.
His stated goal is to help fans watch smarter. And that's exactly what he's doing with HoopVision. You can find his newsletter at hoopvision.substack.com. And you can find Jordan on Twitter @HoopVision68.
We’re thankful to Jordan for joining us and hope you enjoy the show.
CM: Welcome to the PlayAction Pod. As I said, we have a great guest today.
I came across HoopVision earlier this season and immediately understood the concept. But as I dove in, I realized the execution might have been even better than the idea itself. The thing I like most about the way our guest, Jordan Sperber, handles his newsletter is the way he's able to blend analytics with the X's and O's.
He tells you, ‘This team likes to do this, so here's how their opponent's going to try to counter that. And this is why either it did or didn't work.’
It's truly something. We'll get into that and HoopVision more as we go, but first I want to welcome Jordan to the show and say, thanks for joining us.
JS: Thank you for having me Christian. I really appreciate it.
CM: Before we dive into what you're doing with HoopVision, let's talk about how you got here. Take me through your background, the steps that got you here, your background with basketball, statistics, coaching.
Give us the Jordan Sperber Origin Story.
JS: It's a little bit out of order here, but technically the beginning of the story was with HoopVision. In high school, I started a blog and a Twitter account trying to do some of the stuff that I do now. It was a little bit different. It was definitely mainly focused on analytics and statistics in college basketball.
And I wanted to do a lot of X's and O's and coaching stuff too, I just didn't have a ton of experience with it at the time. And I always kind of say this, but in the early days, no one was reading or following or whatever, but the handful of people that were happened to be like Division-I basketball coaches.
When I was in college, I went to Villanova for undergrad and when I was in college, I started hearing from some coaches, did a little bit of consulting, just general networking to it. Definitely wanted to make it a career at that point, but still trying to figure out what exactly that was going to look like.
And then finally, after I graduated college, I became a graduate assistant at the University of Nevada and the video coordinator at New Mexico State. So, I did three years working on a coaching staff and really learning, uh, the ins and outs of how coaching works at the college level.
And that was when the idea popped back to, to start HoopVision again, but this time knowing what I was doing a little bit more than, than in, uh, in, in high school and in college.
CM: Well, that GA year at Nevada really sticks out on your resumé. Obviously with Eric Musselman as the head coach there at the time, obviously Muss is one of the most respected minds in the sport.
What'd you learn from being around him and his staff?
JS: Yeah. The best part about that whole year, especially as someone who didn't have any previous experience. I wasn't a manager, which is how a lot of, a lot of the college basketball coaching world starts out as either a manager, a student manager or as a player.
And I didn't have either of those experiences at the DI level. I just needed to kind of learn how things worked and fortunately, with working for Muss and working at Nevada, the way his staff operates is everyone is involved in everything. I’ve worked for three different coaches and everyone does it a little bit differently.
You have these staff meetings and even if you're not really in charge or responsible for that area, you're still there learning and getting like a graduate degree essentially in coaching and in basketball. So that was extremely helpful, given that it was my first year.
CM: And then after the stop at New Mexico State, like you said, you take the risk, and you start HoopVision in 2018. What's the goal? Not for yourself business-wise, but what's the goal in terms of the content you're looking to offer to fans and like you said, I mean, even your earlier newsletter is coaches.
What's the goal in terms of what you're looking to offer them?
JS: Yeah, the first goal that I had after leaving New Mexico State, it was pretty specific at the time. It started out pretty specific, where I had just been a video coordinator for two years and I had done some interesting work using the different technology and software as a video coordinator.
I just presented this was when I left. There was a conference. Hudl is the company that provides a lot of software and tech for video coordinators. I had literally just finished presenting at a conference on what I did as a video coordinator. And it was a lot of my peers who were really interested in what I was doing.
I can kind of remember being on the plane ride home from that conference. This is again like three or four years ago and thinking, 'If my peers and the people in the industry are really interested in this, there's probably a larger audience.'
And the idea was to be the Internet's video coordinator, like the online video coordinator. And it didn't exactly turn out that way, for a lot of reasons, but what really became the motto once we kind of sat down and I had, I had some help from a couple of friends who have really helped me with the business side of stuff.
The motto really became to help fans, coaches, everyone watch smarter, you know, watch the game smarter, which is a little bit more general than being the online video coordinator, but that's what it's become.
CM: Like I said, when I came across it, I understood the concept immediately.
I'm familiar with similar content for college football. Shout out to Jamie Uyeyama and Irish Sports Daily. Jamie does a great job diving into Notre Dame Football for us at ISD. So, I had a good idea of what I was getting when I first opened it. And as soon as I read it, I'm thinking 'This would be awesome for the college hoops junkie, who wants to understand the game at a granular level.'
But when I got to the end of the first newsletter, I realized for lack of a better word, it was painless. It wasn't too dense. It wasn't too long. You didn't throw 10,000 detailed concepts at me that I'd never heard before. It wasn't overwhelming. And I truly felt smarter after reading it.
Is that a conscious goal of the newsletter to make sure that you're not overwhelming the reader?
JS: It is. It's a tough thing. Sometimes I feel like I'm repeating myself so much, right? Because clearly a lot of the people that read the newsletter are reading it on a weekly basis and they remember previous stuff I've done. Sometimes I'll build off the work a little bit.
And so, it is a tough thing to figure out what level of knowledge to assume that the reader knows. And on the other hand, you can feel like you’re being a little repetitive and talking to yourself.
So, it's a balance and one thing that I think has really helped is the way that I edit video. I animate everything that's happening within the video. If I'm doing a narration to the video, or if I'm writing like in the newsletter, I don't have to include everything that's going on because the video itself explains it.
And if you haven't seen the video, that probably makes no sense what I just said.
(Here’s an example of Jordan’s videos)
But these animations that I do, they're really time-consuming and, they take a lot of work, but I think that they're kind of like the secret sauce to making things a little bit easier to understand.
CM: And like I said before, check it out at hoopvision.substack.com. And I know you're not joking about the video, how long it takes. Like I said, we have guys that do that for us for Notre Dame Football and it's painstaking work. You make it come out nice and smooth for the reader. But I know it doesn't work that way.
It's definitely not dumbed down, right? It's just digestible. It's high-level info. And like you said, college basketball staffs represent a chunk of your readership. So, in your experience, what are they looking for?
Are they looking to supplement their own scouting reports for opponents? Does it help them with self-scout? Are they looking for new wrinkles to incorporate into their own program? What's kind of the feedback you got from that?
JS: That's a really good question. It depends. I definitely cover a lot of the top teams. And so, some of the high-major coaches, I might be covering teams that they're going to play, you know, conference or whatever. And to be fair, those coaches know their conference opponents extremely well, it's probably not adding a ton of value on your conference opponents.
But it can differ. It can be scouting. I can tell you that when I make a video or a newsletter about a coach or a team, I mean, I usually hear from the team in some form.
I have a running joke with a couple media friends that coaches pretend like they don't read everything, but they read everything.
And not just me, not just me. You know, like the beat writer, they read everything for sure. I wouldn't have gotten jobs in the first place, if that wasn't the case, you know, going back to college when they're reading my stuff.
That’s kind of a selling point a little bit of the newsletter is 'Read What The Coaches Read.' But everyone has, everyone has different intentions. They could just be looking to stay up on the trends and that type of thing, which I try to stay up on them.
CM: You did the nice deep dive on Luke Garza last week. That was really impressive, not just to see how good Garza is and why he's so good, but both how he makes his teammates better and how Iowa operates when he's not on the floor.
I know you just released another one on Loyola-Chicago. What other Deep Dive Videos are you looking at doing in the next few weeks here?
JS: This was week number two, like you just said with Loyola-Chicago. And I don't know if I can keep up the pace of a video of that (length) - they're like 10-13 minute, 10–14-minute videos - every Friday.
We'll see if I can. Iowa and Luke Garza was the first one, Loyola-Chicago today.
Gonzaga and Baylor are both definitely going to make some appearances at some point. I'm kind of saving them because I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon, you know? We're going to have time to get to Gonzaga and Baylor.
Michigan and Ohio State play on Sunday, so might do something based off of how that game goes.
I usually go back and forth about three times over the weekend on what video I'm going to do and then by Monday I make myself have to pick a team and to stick with it.
So, we'll see. There are definitely some teams headed on the way.
CM: And as I mentioned, I write for the Notre Dame site, Irish Sports Daily.
ND had a tough schedule this year. They paid a price for it early, but they're on a bit of a surge here. They won six of their last eight. I don't know how much you've dove into them, but have you seen much from them, whether it's scouting them or other teams they've played, that you think is the reason why they struggled early and may be turning things around here down the stretch.
JS: I haven't watched Notre Dame this year. But just looking at their stats recently, they’ve turned into one of these kind of typical, really, really good offensive teams, poor defense. And there's a lot of those every year, nationally, uh, it's better than the alternative of being poor on both ends right?
So Iowa is just a better version of that. They're the number one offensive team in the country and they really struggle defensively. I think that a lot of people on the internet on Twitter give Iowa a hard time for the defensive problems and it's like, when you're as good as they are offensively, you have a pretty big margin for error.
Notre Dame right now is 12th in KenPom (offensive efficiency). But yeah, in terms of the X's and O's of the scheme, I haven't seen him play this year.
CM: Good. I'm glad you mentioned Iowa’s defense. I'm gonna get back to that.
March Madness is coming first I did just glance at your latest newsletter and I saw you don't put too much stock into the eye test, which makes sense to me.
But what do you look at as you're looking, you know, down the stretch here the final weeks? Or what should fans who are thinking about their March Madness brackets, what should they kind of be looking at?
JS: So, the eye test thing, that's mainly about using the eye test to determine who should be in the NCAA Tournament. So, to me, that should be strictly a resumé-based thing. And this is my opinion, but I do feel pretty strongly about it.
How Loyola-Chicago's style of defense, what they do defensively shouldn't factor into whether they're in the Tournament or not. You should be able to play whatever style you want. If you win, if your resume's good, you get in, so that's, that's the distinction there.
But I will say that even having watched all that Loyola-Chicago film, and this was what I wrote about, I still don't really have a great feel for just how good they are. Data-wise or analytics wise, they’re a hard team to rank because they’ve only played five DI non-conference games and they lost two of them to the two better teams – Wisconsin and Richmond. But film-wise or eye-test wise, they've only played five non-conference opponents and there's a small sample size to look at it.
So, all the same problems that you get with the numbers you get with the eye tests. I'd love to see them play against a couple of better teams to have a larger sample size of the film, but you know, it is what it is.
That's my eye test rant.
But then to further answer your question. Yeah, I've done a bunch of research in the past on NCAA tournament and picking teams and looking at different tournament narratives.
Is it important to be hot going into March? Do you want to be riding a long winning streak? Is it important to have seniors on your team? All these different things and there's maybe little edges to be had here and there with that type of stuff. But, by and large, and this sounds like a very obvious point, but the right idea is to pick the better of the teams.
The other way that you can really overanalyze your bracket is with matchups and analyzing the matchups. And I think that gets pretty tricky as well.
I can already tell you right now, having not seen the bracket, the right pick, the right picks are going to be to take Gonzaga and Baylor into the Final Four.
Now that doesn't mean you…I don't like just picking chalk in my bracket, that's not very fun. So I mean, feel free to mix it up. But, just from a statistical probability perspective, those are going to be your two favorites.
CM: Okay. I'm glad because I'm going to give you my thoughts here as we head into final weeks and you tell me where I'm wrong. I think I got the first one right.
I've got Baylor and Gonzaga in the top tier of contenders by themselves.
My next tier is Michigan, Ohio State, Illinois, Houston, Villanova, Texas, Texas Tech, Iowa, Florida State.
I know I threw those at you fast. Any glaring omissions there? Do any of those tier two teams, should they even be considered in the tier one?
JS: I do really like Michigan. I think that it's still probably pretty safe at this point to put Gonzaga and Baylor in a tier by themselves. Then you have the Big 10 basically. I guess that's how I look at it is you have Gonzaga and Baylor and then you have Iowa, Michigan, Ohio State, Illinois.
Michigan has played kind of a step ahead in Big 10 play. Ohio State might have the best resumé along with Michigan, I guess, of that group.
But yeah, to me, it's Gonzaga and Baylor and then those four Big 10 teams.
I'm a little bit skeptical of. The SEC, this year. I think everyone's a little skeptical of the ACC this year.
Villanova would be another team that a lot of people expected to be in that mix, including me, preseason. They've struggled defensively, another team that has struggled both defensively. So, I mean, I could see them making a run potentially, but right now I feel like that it’s those top two and then the four big Ten teams.
CM: And in terms of narratives, I know you just kind of dismissed narratives, but I like the narratives for my bracket.
So, this is what I want from my champ. I want an elite level head coach. I want great point guard play. And I want a legit defense. I don't think any team has won that title without in the KenPom era without ranking the top 20 or the efficiency rankings on defense.
So, the Big 10 teams do they have elite head coaching?
JS: Well, to talk about the defense first. The one thing that is a little tricky about that is if you look at their adjusted defensive efficiency ranks, that's after they've won the tournament. So, they've just won their last six games of the season.
So, a lot of times that then puts them into the top 20 defense, whereas they didn't start the tournament that way. But being good on defense is a very important part of basketball. So, like you're not wrong, you're not wrong. It’s important.
As far as the Big 10 coaches, I think that (Chris) Holtmann at Ohio State is probably one of the most underrated coaches just based off of his track record.
I know last year, I wrote something about how coaches perform against their preseason KenPom ratings. So, if they improve or decline based off of what Ken's initial rankings for a team are, and Holtmann has in every year of his career, going back to when he was at Butler, before Ohio State, he's not the only coach on the list that's done that, but he's the coach who's been around the longest. It was eight or nine years if I'm remembering correctly. So yeah, I think that he's pretty, pretty underrated for how good of a job he's done consistently.
Then Juwan Howard has a small sample size for his career, but it's been really good the last now two years.
Brad Underwood had some really, really good Stephen F. Austin teams. He had the number one offense in the country when he was at Oklahoma State. And then he really struggled when he got to Illinois and they've made a lot of changes recently, both offensive and defensive changes, scheme-wise. They were good last year, but better this year.
And then Fran McCaffery. He was the head coach of Siena before Iowa. That's my hometown team. I'm from Albany, New York. And so, I was in high school, middle school during the Fran McCaffery Siena days when they were winning NCAA tournament games. They beat Ohio State one year. They beat Vanderbilt one year. His teams definitely skew towards the offensive side of the ball, but I mean, he does have a track record of winning some games in the NCAA tournament.
CM: Okay, I'm glad you pointed that out on defense. I didn't realize that that was factored in after, but still, Ohio State, Villanova and Iowa, man, they're down there.
JS: There was an especially bad run of those types of defenses losing early. Missouri is the best example that comes to mind when they had, I think like Kim English and (Phil) Pressey. It was a while back now, but they were either number one or number two in offensive efficiency and they got upset early.
I think maybe some of Doug McDermott's Creighton teams , might've been upset early. There was a bad run of lopsided defenses.
I think that might be a little bit of randomness involved in that, but the basic research on if you'd rather be a good offensive team or a good defensive team, I don't think that there's a huge difference either way, you just want to be a good team. But I think the best argument for why offense is a little bit more important, Ken Pomeroy has done a study on this, when you look at who controls what more within a game.
So, he looked at every statistic and if the offense or the defense has more control over it within that, and the offense does tend to have a little bit more control, which makes sense. Defense is a reaction to what the offense is doing. But there’s something to be said about balance.
And if you want to compete with Gonzaga and Baylor this year, you're going to have to be good on both sides of the ball. We saw that with Iowa playing Gonzaga. They're so good on both sides of the ball that it's going to be hard to just be good at one this year with two dominant teams like that.
CM: And then the point guard play, I'm looking at Houston, Texas Tech and Ohio State.
Should I feel comfortable with the ball in their floor general's hands in a tight Final Four or National Championship game.
JS: I think that it depends a lot on the system. If you have a really good point guard, then you’re going to run stuff through it. I'm looking at, KenPom right here and Villanova pops up, which you didn't ask about, but they're going to play a lot differently than the team that I wrote about today, Loyola-Chicago, they run most of their stuff through their center, their five man.
You mentioned Texas Tech and the first thing that comes to mind is like, they don't even really have that. There's not really a point guard in their system. It's motion offense and everyone is the same kind of, and you know they have Mac McClung, who's been really, really at the good end of games this year, hitting clutch shots. So, I guess he kind of becomes a point guard. I wouldn't really call him a point guard.
The cliche is position-less basketball; that's what everyone wants to play these days. That’s what everyone wants to play these days. It's like a buzzword that you use in recruiting and all this. And that's a little bit overblown I think, but there is some truth to it.
I think if you go back and look at past championships, there is a good track record of point guards, teams with good point guards having won. So, it's definitely something that you want on your team for sure.
CM: Yeah. I know all about position-less basketball and recruiting. That's how Notre Dame does it. They recruit all these guys, whatever size they are. And that's what every kid tells me when I talk to them, they like about Notre Dame so.
Alright Jordan, hey man, once again, we want to thank you so much for joining us.
Seriously, if you like, college hoops even a little bit, look up Jordan's newsletter at HoopVision.substack.com. And just check it out, if you like what you see, purchase a subscription it's well worth it. You can also find him on Twitter @HoopVision68.
As for PlayAction, we're going to be publishing some March Madness guides of our own as well. So, be sure to follow us on Twitter @PlayActionPools and subscribe to our newsletter, PlayActionPools.substack.com.
Our newsletter is completely free, so you get access to everything we're doing.
So, Jordan, thanks again for joining us. We really appreciate it, man. And good luck with the rest of the project and the rest of the season.
JS: Thank you for having me, Christian. I appreciate it. I'll come back on after I do some Notre Dame stuff, alright?
CM: Awesome. Perfect. Appreciate it.