The Momentum Equation
Do slam dunks change the course of a basketball game?
What makes a basketball game 鈥渆xplosive?鈥� Commentators know it when they see it. But for Anil Timbil 鈥�20, a student developer at Google Cloud, the answer is in the data.
This season, Google Cloud partnered with the NCAA to provide real-time March Madness analysis, including game predictions that were featured in TV coverage of the tournament. Computer science major Timbil was one of around 30 students charged with creating these insights by crunching a decade鈥檚 worth of play-by-play data that the NCAA shared with the internet giant.
鈥淭his was the perfect opportunity to combine my interest in basketball and intensive computer science and statistics studies,鈥� said Timbil, a fan of the sport from an early age.
The 鈥渆xplosiveness鈥� question first came up last January, at the Google Cloud & NCAA Hackathon at MIT. There, Timbil and team wondered whether it was possible to quantify the commentators鈥� intangible claims of a team鈥檚 explosiveness. They turned to the data to find out.
First, they focused on 鈥渨hether dunks had any demonstrable effect on the energy or momentum of a team鈥攕omething often assumed to be true, but rarely (if ever) exposed with data.鈥�
The short answer: they did.
鈥淒unks actually contributed to about a 15 percent increase in game acceleration鈥攁 much bigger effect than we鈥檇 anticipated,鈥� Timbil recalled.
But as good as that insight was, it only indicated so much about a team鈥檚 performance. More interesting was what this insight said about explosiveness over the course of a game.
鈥淲e wanted to tie explosiveness to some kind of measurable increase in score differential over a specific period of time,鈥� Timbil explained鈥攊n other words, how quickly one team outscores another during a run. The students defined a run as one team scoring at least 12 points and the other at most five.
鈥淎ll together, we considered explosiveness to be the product of weighted speed of scoring and opponents鈥� stopping power, plus a weighted value for shot accuracy,鈥� Timbil said. 鈥淟ots of points in a run is better than a short run with a slightly higher rate of points over time, but we still wanted to be sure to value faster runs as more explosive.鈥�
The last step was using these new data methodologies to rank the explosiveness of this year鈥檚 teams. These rankings became game predictions featured in Google commercials screened during the tournament. One even featured Timbil.
The key to success in the data and statistics fields is persistence and diligence, according to one of Timbil鈥檚 teachers, Associate Professor of Computer Science Christine Chung.
鈥淭he way Google is so publicly highlighting Anil鈥檚 team鈥檚 work during a television broadcast that reaches millions of homes indicates that it must be world-class,鈥� Chung said. 鈥淭hese novel techniques for analyzing huge amounts of data to pin down a nebulous predictive factor like 鈥榚xplosiveness鈥� can and should be applied to other sports in the future, as well.鈥�
This April, Timbil was also one of 35,000 attendees at the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco. Timbil and the other student developers received a shout-out from Google CEO Sundar Pichai during his keynote address with Timbil appearing on-screen behind Pichai sporting a 糖心TV hoodie.
鈥淚t was really empowering to represent the college among the most competitive universities in the United States,鈥� said Timbil, who is continuing his data science work at a New York City internship this summer.
