COLUMBIA, Mo. — Tucked in a media room within the bowels of Mizzou Arena, Missouri men’s basketball coach Dennis Gates and his staff did something unprecedented Thursday afternoon.
He taught a class to reporters. Basketball Analytics 101, you could call it.
For 75 minutes, Gates, assistant coach Ryan Sharbaugh and two consultants from HD Intelligence — the advanced and proprietary statistics service that MU contracts with for proprietary data — opened the books for reporters to explore the numbers used by the team and ask questions.
“This is unique,” said Andy Schmitt, an HD Intelligence vice president who was part of the educational session.