Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 11, 2016

… Naimo spoke highly of Williams for years – “she’s just scratching the surface,” he told FourFourTwo this week – but she was not a sought-after commodity coming out of college. She was used to flying under the radar by that point, though.

Williams’ first fully healthy season of high-school soccer was her senior year. She had three separate foot surgeries leading up to that season. She didn’t play for any big-name youth clubs or in any heavily-recruited youth tournaments. She only drew interest from two Division I programs: Fresno State, in her hometown, and Pepperdine, three hours south, outside of Los Angeles. Injuries continued in her college years, resulting in meniscus surgery, labrum surgery, a shattered elbow and a fractured bone in her face.

Still, Williams registered 39 goals and 24 assists in college. Much like her high school days, though, she didn’t draw much interest from NWSL teams, making her a somewhat surprising pick at No. 6 overall. Surprising to many, that is, except Naimo.

“I think that what I did at Pepperdine spoke for itself, but at the same time, it’s not a big-name school,” she told FourFourTwo. “So, if I don’t meet Charlie, I don’t think I get drafted. Just because I think he had a connection with New York, he wanted to build a team. He had this idea, so that’s how I think I got here.”

Even if he did not have a supermodel spouse, Tom Brady would be living a life to die for. Fame, fortune, championships, leading-man looks and a job that makes him one of the most recognizable American men on the planet. Who wouldn’t want all of that?

But upon further review, this is one glamour boy who has never been about the glamour. For however many commercial endorsements Brady has, he could have dozens more. He surrendered that marketing battle to his retired rival, Peyton Manning, a long time ago.

In other words, Brady is the ultimate grinder, a full-scholarship player who built his legend around a walk-on’s approach to success. This was back on display about an hour before his return to the NFL, when Brady, 39, was already breathing hard and working himself into a lather Sunday in the bowels of FirstEnergy Stadium. Outside the New England Patriots’ locker room, he was pumping his arms and knees while running pregame wind sprints. Pregame wind sprints with a resistance band strapped around his waist and tethered to a trailing team staffer who was providing the resistance.

… Having helped the Rangers to the Stanley Cup finals in 2014 and the Eastern Conference finals in 2015, Lundqvist was jarred by the team’s elimination last season 11 days into the playoffs. The Penguins exposed the Rangers as slow and aging.

“It was just the way it ended,” Lundqvist said after practice Monday. “They turned up the speed the last two games there, and we didn’t have an answer for it. You look at the run they had going into the playoffs, and once the playoffs got started, they were the best team, no question about it. So it was tough to face them in the first round.”

He added: “Sometimes you need that first round to kind of get going; then, in the second round, you get better and better. To face a good team like that right away, we didn’t have any answers for it.”

RRay Allen calls it “an insult” when his shooting is labeled a God-given talent. “God could care less whether I can shoot a jump shot,” Allen told The Boston Globe in 2008. Shooters aren’t born; they’re made through relentless work. But the best shooters also have core mechanisms?—?physically and mentally?—?that lead to success.

For most of LeBron James’ career, there’s been one question—will he ever do it?

The “it” was bringing a title to Cleveland, and last June, the kid from Akron had his crowning moment. So now a new question arises.

How much longer can he do it?

But now, for the near 32-year-old James, the “it” is very different. The “it” is: How much longer can he play?

James has logged 13 seasons, 11 of which have included playoff appearances and seven of which have ended in the NBA Finals. Entering the 2016-17 campaign, James has played 46,861 minutes of professional basketball. That’s 5,532 minutes more than Larry Bird’s entire career.

… sources close to the situation told the Tribune-Review there is little chance the Pirates will sign Cole to a multiyear deal that would buy out some of his free agent years.

Such an deal wouldn’t make financial sense for Cole unless the team grossly overpaid on the back end.

Cole’s injury history — he also was on the DL twice in 2014 because of shoulder fatigue and lat tightness — makes any big-money deal more of a gamble for the club. The Pirates are more inclined than most teams to favor lower-risk, shorter-term deals.

… “We’re trying to follow the improvement pattern that Kawhi Leonard had coming into the league as kind of a spotty role player into the superstar that he’s become today as a two-way force,” Hanlen said.

Either way, Oubre has to sharpen his jumper, his finishes at the rim and his decision-making off the dribble; he logged nearly three times as many turnovers (34) as assists (13) during his rookie season.

While Hanlen was busy prepping prospects for the 2016 draft, Oubre began his own regimen in Orange County with another trainer, ICE-O’s Charlie Torres. Together, they focused on the swingman’s handle—not to bounce the ball lower and tighter but rather higher, ideally above his hip.

Dan Hodges is a name unfamiliar to all but the most ardent Cherries supporters. But this innovative 30-year-old is one of the architects of AFC Bournemouth’s climb from League One to the Premier League.

The club’s head of sport science since the summer of 2012, he has been instrumental in Cherries’ evolution into an indefatigable unit, one which allies its slick passing game with its willingness and capacity to rival anybody for sheer hard graft.

Hodges nevertheless admits he couldn’t have foreseen the club’s exponential rise, achieved against a backdrop of unerring stability, when he first walked through the door.

… In this article I shall explain the concepts around breathing training in relation to running, and how improving your breathing can improve your performance. I will also explain how bad breathing can affect our mental performance (which we all know is important in endurance events). And I’ll discuss whether better breathing can actually help you lose weight as claimed in some other articles.

All runners want to feel lighter, faster and stronger on their way to the finish line—and most understand that cadence is a significant factor. But how do we go about increasing the number of times our feet strike the ground, and how much is too much?

Bad running form can lead to running injuries, but can a less than ideal cadence also leave runners more vulnerable to injuries?

We talked to Stephen Seiler, professor of sport science and director of research at the University of Agder in Norway, about why optimized cadence is so important for runners and how runners can reach their own peak cadence.

Student innovators from colleges across the country will meet in Eugene for a collaborative competition to create exciting new sports product prototypes at the University of Oregon’s QuackCon.

Organizers are billing the three-day event, set to begin Friday, as the first collegiate sports technology hackathon.

Hackathons, team-based events designed to inspire the creation of new prototypes, are becoming increasingly popular around the country. QuackCon organizers hope to leverage the UO’s strengths in sports marketing, product design and other related fields and capitalize on the robust sports product industry in Oregon.

One thing that might not surprise you about NFL players: They eat a lot, and they eat frequently.

What exactly do “a lot” and “frequently” mean? Here’s an example: A 6-foot-2, 220-pound Carolina Panther might take in about 6,000 calories in a day, over the course of nine feedings that could include several full meals and several significant snacks.

This example came courtesy of Jennifer Brunelli, the Panthers’ dietitian, who showed us a meal plan for the unidentified player.

Of course, he’s just one of 53 on the active roster. When you consider that these players range from a 5-9, 180-pound wide receiver like Damiere Byrd to 6-4, 345-pound defensive tackle like Paul Soliai – and on top of that, the fact that these guys eat two to four meals a day at their workplace – you can imagine the challenges that Brunelli faces.

It has been more than a month since the closing of the 2016 Olympic games in Rio. Team USA provided viewers with another magnificent and historical performance this year at the games, capping off with both the most number of gold and total medals. Though the credit for such efforts are on each of the Olympic athletes striving for greatness, there is a lot that goes into making sure each are prepared and ready for competition. One would argue that a key factor in ensuring such optimal performance by these athletes is contributed to nutrition.

“In my opinion, sports nutrition can be the secret weapon for many athletes” says Rob Skinner, MS, RD, CSSD, senior sports dietitian for the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). Rob had the privilege of working the Rio 2016 games and recently took the time to chime me in on what it’s like to be a sports dietitian for Team USA.

Tons of money brings more pressure to win and puts jobs on the line in a week’s notice.

That’s why college football coaches like Oregon’s Mark Helfrich and Texas’ Charlie Strong are scorching hot on the hot seat. Those programs are not getting the most bang for their buck with Oregon at 2-3 overall and Texas 2-2 while far less opulent operations at Western Michigan and North Dakota State are media darlings this season.

To a certain degree, Colorado can be part of the feel-good, pay-less and get-more stories at Western Michigan and North Dakota State, although the most recent athletic department revenue figures for the Buffaloes is $67,852,236. That ranks No. 50 in the nation. Not bad. But that figure is still only 64 percent of Oregon’s revenue.

… There aren’t any useful ways that measure a player’s ability to combine both volume and accuracy in one number, even though it’s your ability to perform both that makes you valuable.

There is a reason Steph Curry is a generational shooter while Steve Novak is not, even though they both shoot similar percentages.

With that in mind, the purpose of the rest of this post is to elaborate on something we’ll call the Shot Score: a metric that uses the F1-Score to calibrate a player’s ability to shoot with both accuracy and volume.

What the stat does is standardize a player’s volume and accuracy by dividing it by the league leader in both categories, and then uses an F1-Score to generate a number between 0 and 1.