Bamalytics is the science behind how The University of Alabama's Men's Basketball student-athletes and coaches use data to perfect their performance on the court.

Fans can see those results in action each basketball season. What they don't see are the students behind the scenes who help make that happen.

What is Bamalytics?

At UA, student workers with the basketball team learn from Coach Adam Bauman, the mind behind Bamalytics, to become subject matter experts in their own right. Bauman is the director of Scouting and Analytics for Men's Basketball.

Each season, he teaches student workers the many facets of Bamalytics.

"Typically, there are anywhere between six and eight student workers. Their roles include live breakdown of practice games, they assist in scouting opponents and they also do post-practice and post-game data entry on a wide variety of different statistics that we track during practice and games," he said.

While fans may think they know who the star player of the game has been, there's more to that decision than one might think.

Who Gets the Hard Hat?

Bamalytics is also behind those social media videos fans see after a win in which a player receives the white hard hat. That player earned the Blue Collar Points to secure the hat, but there's more to how they earned those points than what the on-court product even shows.

Riley Arnold, a senior sport management student featured in this year's Where Legends Are Made campaign, explains how that data is collected and then used as another coaching tool.

"Our Blue Collar stats show even deeper data," Arnold said. "And what I've been specializing in is watching everyone who's on the floor at any given time and collecting that data. The coaches are then able to use that real-time information to coach the players even during the game."

Guard Houston Mallette said Bamalytics elevates his game.

"You see what it is you're good at, you see what it is you struggle at. So, the main thing is, when it comes down to it, we want to generate a lot of at-the-rim shots, dunks, layups and a lot of threes - those are the highest, efficient shots," he said.

The Takeaway

The data doesn't just help players improve individually.

"So how do you contribute to winning when you're maybe shooting the ball bad or you're not getting shots and it's all in blue collar? The whole reason I wear 95 is because 95% of the game, you don't have the ball," Mallette said. "How are you helping your team win when you don't have the ball?

"So, in the back of my mind, throughout the game, I'm just thinking of blue collar. Can I make blue collar plays and win the hard hat? And then Coach O says it all the time - when you lose yourself in doing that stuff, the offense takes care of itself, which I'm a huge believer in."

Bamalytics has also created a shared experience between the student-workers and the student-athletes.

"Coming here, I thought I just wanted to be a head coach. Obviously, that's a hard field to break into," Arnold said. "Now that I've been involved in the analytics and learning how to build out reports and explain tangible numbers that players learn from, I've really enjoyed that. And so, my focus has shifted into learning more about that aspect."

Added Bauman, "It takes a lot of time to do what they do and so them understanding the amount of effort it's going to take to work at a high level in our business - I think it gives them good opportunities to learn that very quickly as a freshman or sophomore in college. I think they get more of an experience, they're more ready for the real world, whether they want to work in athletics or not."

And for the student-athletes?

"I think it just goes along with Coach's philosophy of the way we play and the style of play that we play relates to the NBA in such a close way that our thing is to educate them on how the game is played at the next level," Bauman said. "That way if they are fortunate enough to have that opportunity to play at the next level that they are ready for it and understand the analytics behind how the NBA game is played."