Albany Herald, Tribune News Service, Phil Barber from
… The Giants’ attempt to recapture the World Series trophy begins this week in Scottsdale, Arizona with the first spring training game slated for Feb. 24. As usual, one man squats in the center of everything for San Francisco — Buster Posey, the Giants’ starting catcher, likely cleanup hitter and unofficial franchise face.
“He’s one of our leaders, our core players. And those are the guys you lean on, depend on, both on the field and in the clubhouse,” manager Bruce Bochy said of the former Lee County High School standout. “We had three championships with him behind the plate and handling this staff. So he plays a critical role.”
There is no questioning Posey’s importance to the Giants. But as the team regroups from a 2016 season that included a prolonged second-half stumble and an unheard-of (under Bochy’s reign, anyway) playoff exit, even the catcher bears a question mark. What, exactly, happened to Buster Posey last year?
… Coming up between 2005 and 2010, I was surrounded by lots of regional talent and the competition was fierce. I’m talking about guys like Kemba Walker, Sylven Landesburg, Darryl (Truck) Bryant, Kevin Jones and Mookie Jones. I squared off against those guys regularly, and it made me better because I had to bring it all the time. Every weekend was like a Big East game. My AAU team, the Westchester Hawks, had five D-I guys in its starting lineup — including Tyshawn Taylor — and two D-I dudes coming off the bench. The ’08 and ’09 recruiting classes from New York were special, and I’m not even including the Jersey and Philly guys like Corey Fisher, Dexter Strickland and Tyreke Evans. They could all do more than just dribble.
We all had the same formative experiences, watching local guys like Sebastian and Lenny Cooke blow up. We all watched Through the Fire, the documentary that focused on Sebastian’s senior year at Abraham Lincoln High. It was the He Got Game of my childhood, but the story was real, and it was one that my friends and I could identify with. (I always thought they should have continued that series, with Lance Stephenson, and then Isaiah Whitehead after him.) We lived and died with those guys.
It appears the chances of seeing Ben Simmons in a 76ers uniform this season are getting slimmer and slimmer.
Last week, coach Brett Brown stated that for Simmons to be ready for game activity, the first overall pick would have to play more than five 5-on-5 games. Asked pregame at the Spectrum Center whether Simmons would start playing some more and get to the 5-on-5 area, Brown didn’t hesitate with his answer about the rookie who fractured his foot on the last day of training camp on Sept. 30.
“I don’t think so,” Brown said. “I feel like he’s moving forward, but to say that we believe he’s going to be ready for 5-on-5 during the All-Star break would be misleading. I don’t see that.
Until they are convinced it will not work, the 76ers will permit a mysterious panel of sports technologists to coach their basketball team. Their belief is that championships will ensue. The initial data shows that it already has killed one season.
That’s what happened when the people trusted to manipulate the Sixers’ playing rotation ordered Joel Embiid to miss the six games immediately following one of the best performances of his abbreviated career. That’s what happened when the Sixers trudged through a four-game road trip, losing every night, allowing an average of 113 points.
That’s the situation as they return to the Wells Fargo Center Wednesday to face the San Antonio Spurs, having drifted from reasonable playoff contention, falling to 15 games under .500.
England’s ability to win matches in the final 10 minutes stems from Eddie Jones’ adaptation of football’s tactical periodisation, a practice used by the likes of Jose Mourinho and Andre Villas-Boas.
After Ben Teo’s 70th-minute try saw England defeat France on round one of the Six Nations, Elliot Daly scored with just four minutes left to clinch victory for Jones’ men in Cardiff. But both tries are down to design, rather than luck with their ability to finish strongly born from a football philosophy.
The tactic is said to be the brainchild of Portuguese lecturer Vitor Frade who developed a method of preparing teams focused around four different moments in a match – the transition from attack to defence, the movement from defence to attack, attacking organisation and defensive structures. The background to the on-field action is born from training methods focused on skill, speed, strength, stamina and psychology with a view to understanding and training for the structure of a match.
… When you sing a note wrong, you know it was wrong. It was you that sang the note, yet it was your brain that told you it was wrong. Your brain knows the difference between what you wanted to do, and what you actually did. It is smarter than you.
Now a wonderful recent study published in Science has shown us where the brain computes the difference between what you did and what it wanted you to do. And in doing so it lets us catch a glimpse of the subconscious, smarter brain in action.
Gadagkar, Goldberg and colleagues hit upon a fabulous way to do find this difference signal.
PLOS One; Riccardo Di Giminiani, Christiano Visca from
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the explosive strength and endurance adaptations in young elite soccer players who underwent a supervised training program for a period of two years. Nineteen players, with seven years of training experience (age: 13.3 ± 0.1 years; body weight: 57.9 ± 4.9 kg; height: 168.9 ± 4.7 cm; BMI: 20.1 ± 1.1 kg/m2), voluntarily participated in the present study. The testing sessions were performed at the beginning of the preparation period in the first (T1), second (T2), and third year (T3). The following performance variables were measured: explosive strength [squat-jump (SJ) and counter-movement-jump (CMJ)], pre-stretch augmentation (CMJ-SJ), leg stiffness [hopping test (HT)], short sprint performance [15 m (SSP15) and 30 m (SSP30)], aerobic endurance [test of Leger (VO2max)], maximal heart rate [at the last step of Leger (HR)], and speed-strength endurance [continuous counter-movement-jumps (CCMJ)]. A significant main effect on the VO2Max (+5.72%; F(2.49) = 3.822; p = 0.029; ES = 1.00), HR (-1.70%; F(2.54) = 3.472; p = 0.038; ES = 0.97), CCMJ (+7.64%; F(2.54) = 5.438; p = 0.007; ES = 1.15), SJ (+10.26%; F(2.54) = 15.254; p = 0.0001; ES = 1.53), CMJ (+7.36; F(2.54) = 8.270; p = 0.001; ES = 1.33), HT (+8.34%; F(2.48) = 3.297; p = 0.046; ES = 1.01), SSP15 (-3.50%; F(2.44) = 12.760; p = 0.0001; ES = 1.53), and SSP30 (-4.44%; F(2.44) = 5.797; p = 0.006; ES = 1.16) was observed in the two soccer seasons. These results highlight that, in long-term training, the monitoring of the adaptive responses in relation to the training load may provide a guideline to optimize the trainability of some performance variables in young elite soccer players (13–15 years). In the present study, we cannot exclude the influence of growth and maturation on some performance variables; therefore, the monitored adaptive responses should be considered as the possible results of an interaction between the applied training load and maturation. [full text]
Medical device developer Medtronic has commercialized a 252-electrode vest that can map the heart’s electrical system. The device could help doctors pinpoint the locations of electrical malfunctions in the heart that cause irregular heartbeats.
Doctors began using the system commercially last week after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November approved the vest, Medtronic announced.
MIT’s Michael Strano has developed a carbon nanotube based detector that can track single cells’ secretion of dopamine. Using 20,000 sensor arrays, the team monitored dopamine secretion of single neurons, allowing them better understand dopamine dynamics.
Unlike most other neurotransmitters, dopamine can exert its effects beyond the synapse. Not all dopamine released into a synapse is taken up by the target cell, allowing some of the chemical to diffuse away and affect other nearby cells. Tracking this dopamine diffusion in the brain has proven difficult. Neuroscientists have tried using specialized electrodes, but only 20 of the smallest electrodes can be placed near any given cell.
While college basketball teams around the country are gearing up for conference tournaments, which then lead into March Madness, the folks at Nike are working on technology that would make it easier for teams to keep track of athletes’ performance metrics in real-time, record stats and make informed decisions about player substitutions. As beneficial as this tech could be for teams monitors their multi-million dollar franchise players, it could be also be an [entertainment value] boon for fans to get an even more nuanced look at their favorite players.
This information is provided to us courtesy of two Nike patent filings that describe a wireless vitals tracking system that would incorporated into an athlete’s shoe. Nike’s wireless implementation allows up to 28 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices to connect to a computer for data processing, after which it is displayed using a GUI. This would more than enough to monitor one (or more) competitive teams on a playing field/court from a central location.
BBC Sport, Phil Shepka, Brendon Mitchell & Tom Garry from
At least 39% of players who played in the English Football League last season were not drugs tested by UK Anti-Doping (Ukad), according to official figures.
Ukad, which carries out testing on behalf of the Football Association, took 1,204 samples from 1,989 players to appear in the EFL in 2015-16.
From 550 players to play in the Premier League, 799 samples were taken. There were no tests in the National League.
… It’s tough,” says Mike Kania, head of football operations at Sports Reference. “A lot of people who don’t understand probability are coming out and saying, ‘Why are these sites predicting anything anymore?’ And the election is brought up a lot. But 28–3 is still a very, very safe lead.”
For the first time in the digital age of easily accessible data, the extremely probable event regularly seems to be turning into the exception, and that was especially true this football season. Well before the Patriots scored a knockout against math, the San Diego Chargers blew second-half win probabilities of 99.9 percent in Week 1, 84.7 percent in Week 3, and 99.8 percent in Week 4, according to Pro-Football-Reference. The Detroit Lions broke math in the opposite direction, winning a Week 1 game over the Colts that they stood a 99 percent chance of losing in the second half, then continuing to mount unlikely fourth-quarter comebacks. The Packers, who made the NFC title game, at one point in November had just an 18 percent chance of making the playoffs. The Patriots’ recovery was the season’s fiercest rebuke of the metrics yet, but it wasn’t the first.
With the 2017 MLS season set to start in less than three weeks, Five Aside caught up with Lucy Rushton, Atlanta United FC’s head of technical recruitment and performance analysis. Rushton is a key player in the development and formation of the Atlanta side that will debut in the league on March 5. With the unique challenge of assembling a roster from scratch, statistical analysis plays a determinant role in the club’s first ever season. Here is our full conversation.
How do you go about adapting your statistical work to the coach’s playing philosophy?
LR: I have to be flexible and tweak the model to the needs and demands of the manager in charge. Adapting my work to the needs of the manager is the key of analysis. When I build and design statistical models, I always have that in mind. Due to the changing culture of managers, I need to be able to make alterations to the system and adapt it to the philosophy of the person in charge.
