Building a scouting report that helps win games

{Sponsored} Time is a coach’s most valued resource, and one divided by an abundance of tasks: communicating with players, analyzing competitors, building reports. With FastScout, college and NBA coaches have found a tool that creates scouting reports more efficiently to help develop winning strategies.

Prior to FastScout’s technology being released, most coaches built their scouting reports by typing one statistic at a time or handwriting them. In an increasingly digital environment, FastModel Sports set out to create FastScout, scouting report software that could automatically update statistics for coaches.

“It was very clear coaches needed a much better way to create scouting reports,” said Peter Stowell, product manager at FastModel.

Ten years later, the FastScout scouting report software is now used by all 30 teams in the NBA and Division 1 college basketball teams.

Automated statistics

After a game is completed, FastModel updates its FastScout software with statistics like box scores, four factors, splits and PACE. Information available is always up-to-date, with coaches having the ability to select which statistics they want to include in their scouting report.

“Most coaches want most of their scouting reports to look pretty similar across the entire season,” Stowell said. “Most teams get it set early in the fall and then they’re kind of just plugging and playing.”

New updates to the software now allow rankings for statistics provided. For example, if a coach is interested in PACE statistics, they can see where their team or opponents stand within the league.

“You can see if you’re the fastest team in your league, the sixth fastest, the slowest — which coaches really like,” Stowell said.

With the new FastScout, coaches have access to advanced stats and can embed video into scouting reports. Coaches can add video into the reports on the web and have those videos show up on the FastScout app along with stats and play diagrams.

“The mobile app is a really nice way for the younger generation of players to view these reports without having to deal with printing things out or coaches distributing them by hand,” Stowell said. Coaches can click one button on the website and distribute them directly to players’ phones.

Streamlined communication

Coaches are particularly excited about the integration of FastDraw into the new FastScout product, Stowell said. They can take plays they have created in FastDraw, import them into FastScout on the web and then attach videos of their team or opponents running those plays.

“It’s a lot easier for coaches to say ‘Hey go to your mobile app,’ look at all the stats and the video and have a conversation through that rather than force feeding (players) paper, especially the younger generation,” Stowell said. “Those don’t have to be separate meetings between video, stats and the play diagrams. They can all live together — and that’s in our app.”

FastModel is looking to make the software accessible to all levels of basketball. The FastScout app is currently available for iPhone and Android, with an iPad version in the works.

“We expect to reach players in the NBA all the way down to high school kids — using our app and consuming our scouting reports through it,” Stowell said. “All these coaches at all different levels have the same main goal, and that’s to win games. Creating a great scouting report of strategy, of your notes, of your video, that helps you win games.”

Resources

The support page on the FastModel website offers guided walkthroughs and answers to frequently asked questions for FastScout.

“That’s something we really pride ourselves on, is being responsive to all of our customers from the NBA to junior high coaches — wherever they are, even across the world,” Stowell said.

He encourages anyone interested in FastScout to visit support.fastmodelsports.com to take a look at features currently available.