If you want to give Jr. (my term for your BB player) an edge in recruiting, you need to utilize player development resources and effectively market Jr. to college coaches. "Charting" used with "See Me Play!" (SMP) from The BBC is a cost-effective and easy way to do both. Charting a game allows you to quickly gather stats, provide your player with a development resource and also helps keep official scorers honest. Totals from a game chart can be added to SMP and published to the world in seconds!
In this article I will share how easy it is to “chart” a player by reviewing a game chart that I made for Carl Culberson (St. Pius X HS, Class of 2012, Houston, TX) for his St. Pius vs. St. John’s game on December 7, 2010. So, let's get started with some charting basics.
Charting Basics
To chart a game you need a court diagram like the one pictured above. You can find charting forms on the web. BBC member players can print out charts from the See Me Play tool. These charts will be printed with the player’s name, game title and date.
The most important rule in charting is to pay close attention to everything that your player does on the court. You do not want to miss anything important! Whenever, he/she shoots the ball, grabs a rebound, assists a score or anything else significant, you simply make a ‘mark’ at the appropriate location on your chart. It is just that easy!
When a Shot is Taken…
On Carl’s chart (above), an “X” on the court diagram represents a missed shot, an “O” represents a made shot. We simply place the ‘X’ or ‘O’ on the spot where the shot was taken. An ‘O’ behind the 3-point arc indicates a made 3 point shot, an “O” anywhere inside the arc indicates a made 2-point shot. Let’s look at Carl’s first half shooting (left)
There are two ‘O’s and three ‘X’s on the left half of the court diagram. For clarity, I should have marked that side “1st Half”. So, by counting the ‘X’s and ‘O’s we know that Carl was 2 for 5 and scored 5 points from his 5 shots. There is one ‘O’ behind the arc (3 points) and one ‘O’ inside the arc (2 points).
Free Throws and Other Marks
Take a look at the boxes above the court diagram. I use these boxes to record other marks by quarter. The top portion of each box is used to record free throws. I use a ‘1’ for made free throws and a ‘0’ for misses. Notice that there are two ‘1’s at the top of the ‘Period 2’ box. This means that Carl shot 2 free throws and made both of them in the 2nd quarter.
The middle section of each box is used to record all other ‘marks’ such as rebounds, steals, assists, etc. In the middle section of the ‘Period 2’ box, there are 3 marks ‘F’, ‘R’ and ‘A’. The ‘F’ represents a personal foul, the ‘R’ is a rebound and the ‘A’ is an assist. To indicate an offensive rebound or an offensive foul, I would simply circle the ‘R’ or the ‘F’.
The bottom section of the box is used for the score at the end of the period. Typically, the visiting team is listed first, so this means that St. Pius has 22 and St. John’s has 32 points at halftime.
We can calculate Carl’s first half stats by totaling the marks on the left court and in the first 2 Period boxes:
2’s: 1-3 33% 3s: 1-2 50% FTs: 2-2 Total Points = 7
1 Rebound, 1 Assist, 1 Personal Foul
You may have noticed that there are no marks in the ‘Period 1’ box. We can discover why by taking a look at the “Playing Time” section of our chart.
The Playing Time Section
The Playing Time (PT) section of our chart is pictured here. It is located on the right side of the court diagram. When my player enters the game, I simply enter the period number in the ‘Qtr’ column and the time on the clock in the “In” column. When my player leaves the game, I enter the time on the clock in the ‘Out’ column. Now I can easily calculate playing time, it is the difference between the ‘In’ time and the ‘Out’ time. This difference is recorded in the ‘Min’ column.
On Carl’s chart the first entry is (2 8:00 0:00 8). This means that he “first entered the game in the 2nd quarter with 8 minutes on the clock and he left with 0:00 on the clock. Since HS quarters are 8 minutes long, Carl played the entire second quarter (all 8 minutes)!
Notice that the first entry on the PT grid is for period 2! The PT grid is telling us that Carl did not play at all in the 1st quarter. Now we understand why the Period 1 box has no marks in it other than the 1st quarter score. Carl’s first half stats now look a bit better. He scored 7 points on 5 shots in 8 minutes. He was perfect from the free throw line. Notice that this simple chart gives us information that does not show up on most stat sheets or in the local paper or web stats box! The player's name, Game Date and Game Title was printed on the form by the 'See Me Play!'(SMP) tool. You can simply write this info on your form if you are not using SMP.
What Else Does This Chart Show Us?
Looking at the first half data on our chart, we can see that St. John forged an 11 point lead (11-22) while Carl was on the bench in the 1st quarter. During Carl s 8 minutes in the second quarter, the lead was reduced by 1 point. That represented a 12 point net improvement over the 1st quarter for St. Pius. Carl scored 7 of his team’s 11 points and St, John’s was held to less than half of their 1st quarter point total (10 vs. 22).
Was Carl the reason for the improvement? Well, our chart does not answer this question, but St. Pius had a much better quarter while Carl was in the game.
Analyzing the Entire Game
When the chart ‘marks’ are totaled, we derive Carl’s total game stats. These totals are recorded in the box labeled “Final”. Note that there are a couple of errors in the totals, the 8 points written down for the free throw total should actually be 5 and total minutes should be 22. Be careful and ensure that your numbers are accurate! You never want a college coach to suspect that your numbers are "doctored"; they will drop your kid like a hot potato!
It is a good idea to compare your totals with the official stats when they become available. You should also work with the official scorer, if possible, to resolve discrepancies, if any. Always defer to the official score, even if you suspect that they are incorrect. It is not worth a few points or rebounds to risk having coaches believe that you are untruthful!
Here are Carl's stats for the game.
Points: 21 2s: 5/11 (10 pts) 45% 3s: 2/3 (6 pts) 67% FTTs: 5/8 (5 pts) 63%
Rebounds-2 Assists-2 Steals-2 Blocks-0
Played 22 minutes
You can view Carl's game schedule along with the stats and links for this game here.
As a player analyzing this chart, one thing would really get my attention. There are 5 X’s and 6 ‘O’s in the paint! That means that 6 shots out of 11 were missed in the paint! I would want to shoot a higher percentage so close to the bucket. If these shots were not heavily contested, I would have to ask myself if this was just an off night (lots of players would love to have an off night with 21 points ! ) or if this is an area of my game that I need to give some attention.
Charting multiple games is one method of discovering trends. If I looked at say 10 charts and this was the only one with lots of X’s in the paint, I can safely assume that this was an anomaly. Otherwise, I have discovered an area of my game that requires attention!
Carl scored 21 points in 22 minutes. That is almost 1 point per minute which is considered to be outstanding. What if 4 of those X’s in the paint were O’s? Now we would be looking at almost 30 points in 22 minutes; that is considered to be exceptional offense!
Here is one additional interesting fact that is obvious from looking at the chart, Carl got most of his points in the paint! Look at both sides of the court. There are only 4 shots outside of the paint. So, it appears that this point guard knows how to get high percentage shots even though he was 2 for 3 from three-point range. A point guard in the paint creates problems for the defense.
One charted game is not enough data to make reliable conclusions about a player. Multiple charts are necessary to spot strengths, weaknesses and trends. Players that are serious about improving their game, should take advantage of the information that charting can provide.
More Reasons to Chart
Acquire and Use Stats Quickly. When you “chart” games, stats are available to you immediately after each game. You can post the stats online quickly with tools like BBC See Me Play! Acquiring stats from your coach or school could take days or longer. Sometimes the stats are not made available to the players at all! If you have college coaches tracking your progress, it is a good idea to post regular and accurate updates of your play on the web. This strategy rewards those who visit your web pages and encourages them to return often for more data.
Another benefit of having charts available after games is that as you review the chart, the game is still fresh in your mind. This may help your analysis and make it easier to identify areas to work on at your next workout or practice.
Keep the Official Scorer Honest. If the official scorer knows that others are charting the game and comparing results, he will tend to be more diligent and careful about the job and produce more accurate results.
Work with your team’s booster club or parent’s group and get more parents involved in charting. You may discover errors when everyone compares notes. For example, if the official scorer has John with 14 points and Jerry with 3 points and John’s chart has him with 11 points and Jerry’s chart shows that he had 6, you can conclude that the official scorer gave John 3 of Jerry’s points. The official team stats can then be corrected. You can bet that the official scorer will be more careful next game; this benefits everyone on the team. You may also discover that the official scorer had a bias towards John. And yes, this does happen!
Provides Players With a Development Resource. It is a good idea to collect your game charts in a binder so that your player can study them. Identifying areas where improvement can be made is the goal here. For example, a player may discover that his shooting percentage is low from a certain area on the floor or that he/she is shooting too many threes. The improvement that a player makes could become the difference between receiving a scholarship and Mom/Dad shelling out more money for college. Note that the difference between player A and player B being awarded a scholarship is sometimes very small! I cannot overstate this truth: hard work does make a difference! Charting is easy work, but you have to do it to get the payoff.
Other Things You Need To Know
A missed shot does NOT count against a player’s shooting percentage if he/she is fouled! So, to prevent statistical errors, be sure that you note the foul on your chart. One way to do this would be to use a mark like this, ‘X/F’. These marks should NOT be counted as a shot attempt or in your player’s foul count! Using this mark does allow you to capture what happened and where it happened. .
Understanding referee hand signals will make your job easier. Referees communicate what is going on on the court to the official scorer with hand signals. The accuracy of your charts is directly related to YOU knowing what is happening out there! So, take a few minutes to learn the hand-signals used by referees that are pertinent to your charting task.. You can click this link to get started, Understanding Basketball Referee Hans Signals.
Here is a small but useful tip. Print your charting forms on pre-punched 3-hole paper. You can then easily file forms in a 3-ring binder. You do not want your charts spread out all over the house when your player needs them.
Conclusion
In this article, I have used a chart designed by the BBC to illustrate the charting process and its benefits. It is easy to transfer data from this chart to the BBC See Me Play system and instantly publish this information to college coaches and the rest of the world. Our goal is to help you to elevate your exposure, prepare for college and get recruited!
You can create your own system. The key is capturing information that can be used for player development and marketing. Giving your player an edge could save you thousands of dollars in college costs. So, please consider starting a charting project today for your player. You will be happy about the seeds that you planted when harvest time arrives! If you need help getting started, just let me know.
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