Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 12, 2019

… Until WPA, most basketball statistics were blind to context: a basket scored in the first quarter counts the same as Leonard’s game-winning basket, for example. By contrast, WPA considers when a player scores, rebounds, makes a turnover. Because a basket made when the game is on the line boosts a team’s chances of winning more than one scored midway through a blowout.

WPA thus rewards the players, like Leonard, who save their biggest and best performances for the most critical moments. The best players in basketball accrue 5-10 wins worth of WPA per 82-game season, boosting their chances of winning a given game by about 10%. By this metric, Leonard was solely responsible for seven wins in the regular season, and more importantly, more than two whole wins of the Raptors’ magical playoff run.

So the number above means the best player in the trade — Leonard — was worth about 2.4 playoff wins, while the second-best player (DeRozan) was worth .57 playoff wins. It’s very difficult to calculate the future value of all the players who were traded (especially draft picks). So we concentrated on value when it’s most real: right now.

… Lloyd has five goals in her last three national team games, including two goals off the bench in the second half of a World Cup tuneup against New Zealand. There is no quintessential Carli Lloyd goal, with all of the ways she has sent balls howling through the air or along bowing blades of grass on the way to stretching out the back of a net; there are only types of quintessential Carli Lloyd goals. You have likely seen the type dozens of times: a relentless run into the attacking third, in tandem with teammates, her ability to find the softest space in a defense and wait for the ball to arrive before one-touching it past the outstretched goalkeeper. Lloyd’s greatest skill has always been the way she is able to see the greatest potential for how a play can end up, no matter how that play begins. Soccer is a game not only defined by its scoring, but by all of the small moving parts that both build toward the goal and make the most use of the space on a pitch. Carli Lloyd has excelled at all of those aspects for so long that even now, when she checks in off the bench at the dawn of a second half, she still shifts the pace and urgency with which the U.S. women play.

Renato Sanches (21) is currently in his native Lisbon. In order to keep fit, the Portuguese European champion of 2016 now even takes kickboxing lessons. For professional fighter and Muay Thai expert Alex Martins.

England boss Gareth Southgate says he will “demand more” of his players after their Nations League disappointment.

Southgate’s side reached the Nations League semi-finals but lost 3-1 to the Netherlands after extra time.

“I’ve got to make sure I’m constantly raising the bar with this group and we don’t accept any kind of sloppiness to creep in,” said Southgate.

Take Home Message: A college freshman with dynamic postural control limb imbalances, decreased hip extension strength, or decreased core muscle endurance during bridging exercises is more likely to develop a lower extremity overuse injury.

In April, the head women’s soccer coach at the University of Houston stated in an email to a parent that he was implementing several program changes to prevent injuries caused by physical punishment after 12 of his players experienced rhabdomyolysis. Diego Bocanegra went so far as to admit that one change involved removing mention of physical punishment from the team’s weight room manual, leading some to question why such language was written policy in the first place.

Many student-athletes in various sports have suffered rhabdomyolysis, a serious syndrome triggered by extreme exertion that results in dead muscle fibers being released into the bloodstream. It is the all-too-common result of coaches mandating extreme workouts and pushing student-athletes to participate in activities that are not reasonably safe. At its worst, rhabdomyolysis can lead to complications such as renal (kidney) failure or heatstroke, and even death.

Not only are extreme workouts bad practice from the standpoint of student-athlete safety, they can lead to institutional liability, as illustrated in Lee v. La. Bd. of Trs. for State Colls., 2017 CA 1431 (La. Ct. App. Mar. 13, 2019).

A team of Brazilian physicists analyzing the brains of rats and other animals has found the strongest evidence yet that the brain balances at the brink between two modes of operation, in a precarious yet versatile state known as criticality. At the same time, the findings challenge some of the original assumptions of this controversial “critical brain” hypothesis.

Understanding how the huge networks of neurons that comprise our thinking organs process information about the world is a daunting mystery for neuroscientists. One part of that broad puzzle is how a single physical structure can be primed to deal with life’s myriad demands. “If the brain is completely disordered, it cannot process information,” explained Mauro Copelli, a physicist at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil and a coauthor of the new research. “If it’s too ordered, it’s too rigid to cope with the variability of the environment.”

Parents who dream of their children becoming professional athletes, and coaches who believe that single-minded dedication is the only way to reach the top of their sport, have contributed to an increase in early sport specialization. However, there are many researchers, coaches, and athletes who have been pushing back on this trend, citing a range of negative repercussions relating to skill development and the risk of physical and psychological harm.

… Founding partners of the sports accelerator include Next Level Fund, an investment firm backed by the state of Indiana, the Indiana Sports Corp, the NCAA, and Pacers Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever. Supporting partners include the Indianapolis Colts, the NTT IndyCar Series, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“To make something like this happen is a testament to the strength of the Indy sports teams and how close and friendly everyone is there,” said Jordan Fliegel, managing director of the Techstars Sports Accelerator. “I don’t think that’d be possible in a city like New York, or LA, or Boston. I don’t see the Celtics and the Patriots, Red Sox, and Bruins all getting together in a super collaborate way with no egos.”

… “Her injury wasn’t a broken bone,” Angie said. “We didn’t know what happened until she had an MRI. Do we just wait for a while?”

The reason for pause was one many families might consider. Health care costs have increased dramatically over the years, as have insurance premiums. Without threat of life-altering injury, perhaps patience would pay off — literally. The pain might recede. The injury might heal. There might be no reason to see a doctor, and subsequently write a check, at all.

Thanks to decisions made by the Manton school district over the years, the Taylor family didn’t need to weigh all those factors.

Manton Consolidated Schools is one of several area districts to carry a supplemental insurance policy through Kalamazoo-based 1st Agency, which covers students should they be injured at school or while competing in or traveling to and from scheduled athletic events.

No single food regimen works for everyone. A new study is the most comprehensive effort yet to understand why.

1. We knew our glucose response to food was highly variable and unique (work form @WeizmannScience @segal_eran and colleagues, reviewed here [thread]

Hydrogels, electrolytes, and drink frequency top the list at this year’s ACSM conference

The French Open men’s singles final between Rafael Nadal and Dominic Thiem on Sunday was everything fans expect clay-court tennis to be: full of long rallies capped by tremendous winners.

That’s what clay court tennis is all about, right? Patience, perseverance, consistency, shot tolerance, grinding and suffering?

Short rallies ending in errors are relegated to our short-term memory, quickly dismissed as being irrelevant and extraneous to the final outcome.

But short rallies are the norm, not the aberration, at the French Open, according to analytics provided by Roland Garros’s new technology partner, Infosys. Errors flow freely on clay, particularly at the start of the point.

… Entering this year, seven of the top eight World Cup squads of all-time by Soccer Power Index were from either the U.S. or Germany. In this World Cup, France and Australia are in that conversation, both rated more highly than the world champion U.S. team of 1999. This year’s teams from the Netherlands, England, Japan and Canada are close behind.

This is no accident. The European federation reported almost 2.1 million registered female players in FIFA’s 2014 women’s football survey, just shy of the 2.3 million registered in the U.S. and Canada alone. Elsewhere in the world, though, progress has been slower. The developing African and South American federations reported just 54,055 and 25,459, respectively. The top 20 nations in FIFA’s rankings had 91 percent of the registered players.