Coach Gabriel Piccato, who for several years in the 1990s worked in the Entre Ríos National Team, is one of the leaders of the advanced statistics project that the Entre Ríos Basketball Federation (FBER) carries out with the Concepción Regional Faculty. of Uruguay from the National Technological University (FRCU) and the Concordia Regional College of the UTN (FRCON), based on data from matches of the First Division Men’s Provincial League.
The former coach of La Unión de Colón stated: “We have been trying to understand the game from another side for a long time. In recent years the experience has been very strong regarding the opening of a new world such as statistics, the great flow of information and related to that handling Big Data. Then I began to ask myself a lot of questions that arose; I began to read a certain story about what I am passionate about that they do in other countries, and my proposal was because we cannot have a place in Argentina where we can go to find out what the story is from the numbers of our competition. For example, who was the top scorer in certain values in the incidence of three-point shots or which national player had a more relevant weight in different tournaments ”.
The current national coach, 48 years old and a native of San Jorge (Santa Fe), added that “I was lucky enough to direct a player like Leonardo Gutiérrez (NdR: Olympic champion in Athens 2004 and legend of the National League), who he won 10 LNB but we do not have a numerical endorsement that can describe the weight of that player in those 10 titles; however, the NBA does have it from Michael Jordan throughout its history. So I was wondering why not and how this exceeds me, I tried to seek help ”.
Regarding the project that he is promoting together with his Concordian colleague Luciano Correa, Piccato indicated: “We got to work with Luciano on this possibility and I am really very grateful that there was an impressive synergy, two academic areas working together for a common project and above all power begin answering questions for those who have the concern and that it can be accessible to all. Undoubtedly it will serve a little to value our history and put a number on everything; That seems more important to me because if we are not in the field of the merely subjective, and although the emotional is important, it would not be a disjunctive to have a number to indicate the different circumstances that make the game.
“It is to be able to have a place to turn, to nourish and spread knowledge, that a virtuous circle is made. There are many advanced statistics works but none with the endorsement of two Universities, and Entre Ríos can be highly proud of the project. Academic support in something sports is very important. It will be the first in the country, “he added.
Finally, Piccato made it clear the importance of taking advanced statistics to the field of the Inferiors: “There is no type of statistical value in training categories. We talk a lot about training, what a certain player would have to do, but we don’t have any parameters to measure growth. Those kinds of jobs in US college basketball and NBA teams can come to check and approve of certain player performance. And I would like to transfer that variable to formative players who do the process. There is a big black hole and I wish I could have that information ”.
Meanwhile, Luciano Correa gave details of the beginning of the work with Piccato and commented that “with Gabriel we are united by the relevance of the numbers and statistics, we are coaches who try to analyze the numbers first so that we can then go directly to the part of the game . But we try to see what the statistics say. ” “The world of basketball has had much more in-depth statistics and Gabriel is one of the specialists and perhaps the best in the entire country; he has been the assistant in charge of advanced statistics in the last World Cup in China in the coaching staff of the Argentine National Team ”, he added.
The DT of the UTN Concordia and that last season of the Provincial League he directed Ferro de San Salvador, said that “from some talks that the pandemic gave us, of the good it gave us and the time it allowed us to talk, a conference by an engineer from the UTN in Buenos Aires generated a call from Gabriel and thus we began to think about how this project generates by connecting with the UTN laboratory in Concepción del Uruguay ”.
