The Sports Analytics Group (SAG) brings together SFU faculty, students,and coaches who all share a passion for sports and the analytics behind them. SAG members bring their unique perspectives from various disciplines including business, mathematics, statistics, and computer science. Beyond SFU, SAG engages coaches and practitioners in their respective fields to gain insight and apply our research
to real world situations. In professional sports, individuals and organizations use stats to help evaluate the performance of players and teams. General managers look to statistics to valuate present and future players. Agents use them to make a case for a better contract for their clients. Players use them to identify areas they need to improve their skills and understand the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents. Of course, at the end of the season the most important stat is the win-loss column. Managers and owners use them to assess how well their team performs in head to head competition with other teams as a starting point for making strategic decisions to better the franchise. However, wins and losses are only the surface of the statistics world. Underneath, lies an extensive culture of analytics where personnel such as professional analysts and scouts mine almost every conceivable part of a player’s activities on and off the court. One of the desires to create all these formulas and algorithms is to better describe the structure of a sport and what makes it work and fail. SAG is interested in analytics across various sports including basketball, soccer, golf, and cricket. Our goal is to create new knowledge about sports and the underlying analytics that drive the game, players, and the major decisions in sports organizations. Find us on Twitter
