Video Games; Video coordinator David Egelhoff plays a key role for the Buckeyes – Ohio State Buckeyes
12/29/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Typically, a college basketball game is played, a winner and loser determined, the highlights of the contest are shown on the late local news, the box score is printed in the newspaper the following morning and then the game customarily fades to memory … right? Well, that might be the case for most, but for the Ohio State men’s basketball coaches, staff and players the game is similar to an analytical class, where countless coaching strategies, defensive wrinkles and offensive nuances will be mulled over for days to come. Cultivating the class curriculum is Ohio State video coordinator David Egelhoff, who manages video scouting for the Buckeyes.
Egelhoff, a manager for five years for the Buckeyes as an undergraduate from 1998-2002, returned to the Buckeyes this season after spending 2002-03 as video coordinator with the Orlando Magic of the National Basketball Association. He is mainly responsible for acquiring video of future opponents, disseminating tapes of Ohio State games to other teams and breaking down both Ohio State and opponent game tapes for the coaches to use in preparation for upcoming match ups.
“I deal with video scouting of our team and our opponents,” Egelhoff said. “I help the coaches analyze film each week. I also am the main contact for sending our game tapes to other teams. For instance, when we played Seton Hall, I coordinated with their three previous opponents and obtained game tapes through a type of understood exchange process that goes on between teams in college basketball. On the other end, the Seton Hall game followed Furman for us, so after that game I was in charge of sending tapes to Furman’s next couple opponents. It goes back and forth that way, but it is how we obtain opponent tapes before our games.”
Once game day arrives, Egelhoff can be found seated directly behind the Ohio State coaching staff near the bench, taking notes on what he will be breaking down in the near future following the game. As a former manager, Egelhoff is not only familiar with the bench setting, but with the Ohio State gameplan as well, which serves a great purpose as the video coordinator for the Buckeyes.
“I was a manager here for five years,” Egelhoff said. “I sit right behind the coaches at the game and I attend most practices. So, I know what play the team is running most of the time. That helps a lot in my position. Sometimes I have to rely on the coaches to let me know if we have added any new plays, but for the most part I can pick things up in the first couple seconds.”
Following the conclusion of the game, Egelhoff heads to his control room inside the men’s basketball lockeroom, where he enters each play into the video editing system.
“After a game I spend about three to four hours with our computer editing system, where I digitalize the game and input it into the system.” Egelhoff, who earned his degree at Ohio State in business administration in 2001, said. “When all is said and done, the coaches will be able to see the entire offense or defense in two separate 15-minute tapes.”
From the moment Egelhoff begins to input the game to the time the 15-minute tapes become a finished product, is a period of what seems to be an endless series of breakdowns involving each team’s offensive and defensive schemes, while also focusing on specific players from each squad.
First, Egelhoff splits his time between the Buckeyes’ most recent game and the last couple contests by the upcoming opponent. He then divides those tapes into offensive and defensive segments for each squad. Yet another breakdown occurs when Egelhoff begins to assign the types of offensive plays and defensive sets to each sequence. The process continues further as the players now become more scrutinized as Egelhoff creates a tape of the players for the next opponent and, at the coaches’ request, a tape of any requested Ohio State individual.
“First, I go through the game and assign misses and makes on offense and when we force misses on defense or when the other team scores on a make,” Egelhoff said. “Next, I go through the game a second time and use codes to designate specific situations, like when our offense faces a certain defensive zone set. I also will describe what type of offensive play we run to the computer, so the coaches can look at how one particular set play worked in that game.
“Once everything is coded and filtered by the computer, I then can start creating separate edits pertaining to different game situations,” Egelhoff continued. “We can get every offensive possession into sections, like when we are up against a man-to-man or different types of zone defenses. All in all, I put in about five to six hours into making three separate six to seven-minute segments on the opposing defense, offense and their players, while also breaking down our last game into several tapes.”
Joining Egelhoff during periods of film scouting is associate head coach Rick Boyages, as the pair combines effort to focus on the opponent defensive packages.
“Coach Boyages and I are responsible for scouting the opponent as well,” Egelhoff, who was a manager on three NCAA tournament Buckeye squads, including the 1999 NCAA Final Four team, said. “We put together the first defensive edit and see what they do in say a “1-2-2” or a “1-3-1? zone. The computer can go as far as to separate what types of defenses the opponent runs after I key in the plays.”
Boyages considers Egelhoff’s role a vital asset to the team as college basketball programs continue to utilize film study in order to gain an advantage in preparation for the next foe.
“What David does is crucial to our success as a team,” Boyages, who, like Egelhoff, returned to the Buckeyes this season after spending three years as head coach at William and Mary, said. “Video scouting is one of the major points of game preparation. It helps us evaluate the other team, determine what they do well and don’t do well and figure out the best strategy for us to come away with a win. Video scouting is a huge advantage on two fronts. It allows us to analyze the opponent offense and defense, while also allowing us to do what I call ‘self scout,’ which is when we breakdown our own offense and defense. David allows us to scout a team and ourselves in the most effective form possible.”
Boyages said what could be learned through video scouting about the Buckeyes and their opponents is immeasurable.
“We can examine so much with our film prep,” Boyages said. “Player tendencies, coach tendencies and team tendencies. We can break things all the way down to what they like to run coming out of a time out. It’s amazing. We also get to see how other teams played against our next opponent and how they might have done things differently than we did and compare their results to ours. No matter what the situation, any advantage is well worth it.”
Upon visiting Boyages and Egelhoff in the video room following the Buckeyes’ 70-68 victory over Furman earlier this season, one would find both busy analyzing each play from that contest.
“First, I look at offensive misses and makes,” Boyages said. “We just played a game last night and the team is tired, so we will take a lot of practice time to look at the game from last night. We’ll look at both our offense and defense in 15-play segments. David also will enter the game into the computer and filter the plays down to categories like turnovers and turnovers by individual, so we can show certain players all of their turnovers from last night and talk about what we can do to correct the mistakes.”
The ability to single out plays, defenses and focus in on one select individual from either team is a useful tool in evaluating what strengths and weaknesses lie within one’s own team and its opposition. The ability to breakdown individual players becomes more significant when facing a team the Buckeyes have never seen before. Egelhoff creates a tape comprised of highlights from every individual who sees significant playing time for the opposing team. As a result, the Buckeyes gain some familiarity with the opposing personnel and hopefully acknowledge some tendencies certain players exhibit on both offense and defense. This especially comes to light when the Buckeyes face an opponent for the first time in team history, like Furman.
“We put together a package with the personnel from the other team so our guys can get a feel for their game and become familiar with them as players,” Egelhoff said. “We had never played or seen Furman play before, so we used the scout tape on their players a lot. It may sound simple, but we use the tape so our guys can place names with faces as well.”
A veteran of four seasons with Ohio State, senior captain Velimir Radinovic pays close attention to the video scouting on upcoming individual opposition.
“What David does is a major help to our team,” Radinovic said. “He breaks down clips of what opposing teams run and helps us get a look at the opponent personnel. He breaks them down individually so we know their tendencies and what they do well and what they like to do most. That helps us gain an advantage on our opponents when we have a good idea of what to expect from each player.”
As scheduled and structured as the video scouting may seem, the rigorous and hectic schedule of a collegiate basketball season throws a couple curveballs at Egelhoff when the Buckeyes play back-to-back games or head off on a road trip. Both factors affect the approach Egelhoff takes in compiling his game tapes.
“Everything changes when we are on the road,” Egelhoff said. “We are crunched for time before we leave and we are away from our equipment, which is something we are looking to solve. It means a couple more hours and a late night or two, but that just comes with the territory.”
The typical edit time also is altered when the Buckeyes face an opponent for the second occasion during league play in the Big Ten schedule. In the waning days before the second meeting, Egelhoff is presented with a new agenda of footage to breakdown. Having faced a team previously, the Buckeyes are fairly familiar with what they run on offense and defense and their personnel.
Boyages actually finds the second go-around studying a team more interesting than the first look as he described the second round of video scouting as a type of “cat and mouse” game, where each team will try to counteract one another by making slight adjustments and adding new wrinkles to plays. Boyages also enjoys seeing how his players react to such adjustments.
“Say we are playing Indiana for the second time during the league season and we look at the tapes of the first game,” Boyages said. “We’ll use them as a comparison, which is fun because you get to see when our guys do something right against one of the plays we showed them the first time. On the other hand, we get to see when our guys don’t do what they were told to do the first time and work to correct that.”
Radinovic said the second look at a team is immensely beneficial because it affords the Buckeyes the opportunity to emphasize some aspects they may have lacked in the first meeting.
“Our film prep changes when we have played a team before,” Radinovic, who upped his point total from the first meeting to the second against five Big Ten clubs last season, said. “David helps us and the coaches point out errors and reinforce the approaches that worked in our last meeting with a team. That way we pick up on the things we executed well to make us better as a team.”
Whether introducing a new opponent or examining what old foes may have in store for the Buckeyes, Egelhoff’s role as video coordinator is a decisive entity in the new age of college basketball. However, as great a consequence video scouting has on Ohio State’s win and loss columns, Egelhoff finds solace in the simple satisfaction of learning something new about the game he loves in each scouting session.
“It is great for me,” Egelhoff said. “In this job, I get the opportunity to become familiar what teams run. It is a continuing learning process and that makes it fun.”
