Justin Gainey’s ‘game experience’ + GM Patrick Stacy’s ‘analytical expertise’: The perfect complement?

We were in attendance for Justin Gainey’s media availability yesterday. It was his first time meeting the NC State press at the Dail Center, making us excited to get a little more insight about how he intends to build this program and his thoughts on the current roster.

I would say that the three major topics talkeda bout were 1) Paul McNeil Jr., 2) Analytics, and 3) Patrick Stacy.

Paul McNeil’s return is a huge story, but we’ve covered that extensively, and yesterday we posted everything Gainey had to say about that topic.

Today, I want to dive a little deeper into the last two topics. These are two topics that overlap and give a lot of insight into how Gainey views the game of basketball, which will give us hints into how he intends to run this program.

After a few general questions about the program and McNeil. I asked him about his view on analytics.

Pack Pride: Can you talk about analytics? You played in an era when they weren’t as accessible. How does that fit into your program? Have you been with coaches who took it more or less seriously, and what do you plan to do?

Gainey: “When I played, the three-point line was at the top of the key. I remember my coach yelling that if you’re going to shoot a three, your foot has to be right on the line. We ran flex offense with eight guys inside the three, and the mid-range shot was something everybody tried to get to.

As a former player from that era, it takes time to adjust to analytics and understand that the mid-range may not be a great shot. I hit a game-winner on a mid-range shot against Maryland right here in this arena. So it’s hard to tell me the mid-range is a bad shot.

But I’ve been hit with enough numbers over the years to implement analytics into our processes, both offensively and defensively. Over the last few years, I’ve become even more aware and have studied it more. In the SEC, many teams play off analytics, so you have to be prepared. But I plan on implementing analytical views and concepts into everything we do. It’s everywhere, from analytics to AI, it’s all in there. You have to figure out ways to make yourself more efficient, because that’s the end goal of it all. So yep, we will do it and I’ve got a great staff of guys that understand it way better than I do and are even better at explaining it and allowing us to implement it into our philosophies.”

There will be some who feel like this response doesn’t go far enough. It’s not some buzzword-fueled response on how everything will be based on analytics and how it’s the foundation for competing in today’s landscape, yada, yada, yada. To me, Gainey’s response was so refreshing. There was a level of authenticity there that I appreciated.

Don’t get me wrong, one of the best things the Will Wade era brought us was a big shift towards analytics, most notably with the hire of then assistant GM Patrick Stacy. (If you want to read more about Stacy’s background, click here). I believe the Keatts era ended early because he didn’t have a guy like this. As the portal era and NIL kicked into high gear after their Final Four run, Keatts struggled with being able to pinpoint needs and fits in the portal, and then, with a roster of pieces that didn’t really mesh, he could never find that string to pull it all together.

At this point, most would agree that there needs to be a happy marriage between analytics and old-school feel. And when I say old-school feel, I just mean the understanding of the game you pick up from playing it your whole life. Sure, you could try to boil all of that down into a number, but I honestly believe some things can’t be calculated. Finding that right balance is the key, and the combination of Gainey and Stacy may just get us there.

The entire analytics explosion into sports took off with Billy Beane’s ‘Moneyball’ in baseball. You’ve probably seen the Brad Pitt movie, but the idea was that the Oakland A’s struggled to compete with large market teams like the New York Yankees, so instead of trying to compete using the same theories as the Yankees, A’s GM Billy Beane turned to advanced metrics to try to find a competitive advantage. He did, and they nearly won the World Series.

Fast forward 25 years, and that idea has been fully mainstreamed to the point where every team in every sport has access to deep analytics. Now it’s become somewhat of an arms race. Who has the deepest analytics? What are some new statistics we can create that no one else has, that show something no one else is seeing?

This is where Patrick Stacy comes into play. Stacy is the creator and former owner of ‘JAM Basketball Intelligence’, a company based around a proprietary software that compiles data on players all over the nation and can pinpoint players based on any input you can cook up. His work with some of the nation’s top teams put him on a rocketship in the industry. After Wade’s departure, there were those within the NC State ranks who made sure Stacy was retained. When Gainey arrived, he began to understand why…

“I didn’t know him at all initially. He had worked with Amarrow Morgan on my staff at Tennessee, and he raved about him, but I hadn’t met him. When I got here, April 1st was the press conference, the portal opened on the 7th. It was myself, Riley Collins (who came with me from Tennessee), and Patrick. We had to get to work.”

“I was impressed with how hard he worked and how prepared he was to shift gears and understand my vision as we entered the portal. We spent a lot of late nights together and had many late-night phone calls. He was always available. Through that process, he was very impressive, and I started to warm up to the idea of him being on our staff.”

“As I brought other assistants in, they spent time with him and validated what I was seeing. That made the decision really easy. He’s a rising star in this business. I really believe that”

If you want an example of what all the fuss is with the buzz surrounding Stacy, look no further than NC State’s signing of RJ Keene, a guy stat-guru Evan Miya calls “College basketball’s best player who doesn’t score.” Gainey was looking for a glue guy. Someone who could come in and lead by example. He wanted someone who understood his vision of toughness and grittiness and someone who was willing to do the things most players today turn their nose up at.

“Patrick Stacy brought him to my attention,” said Gainey.

“You know, and it was one of those long nights we were in here working and trying to just put together a roster that fit. I didn’t want to just go out and grab a whole bunch of, oh man, this is the best player out there. I wanted pieces that really complemented each other, and they really fit.

And, you know, I was telling him what I was looking for. And I was like, man, we need a glue guy. We need a guy who’s willing to do anything to win. And he said, I got the guy for you.

And so he’d been telling me about him for a couple of days. And I’m just like, OK, OK, we’ll get to it. Let’s try to get this starting five set. Right. And he kept coming back to him. And then one late night he wore me down. Like, all right. I’ll watch him. 

So he puts him on the film on the offensive side, and I’m watching him like ‘eh he’s decent’. But then he was like “Ok, now let me show you what he really does.” And then he goes to the defensive clips. And I’m like, holy cow, this dude is exactly what I’m talking about.

So then I said, ” Can you get me on the phone with him?

So we call him right then. And I just remember that conversation. He said, ” Coach, if I come to State, man, I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I’ll run through a wall. I’ll get every loose ball. I just want to win.”

And right then I said, man, that’s music to my ears. Like, when can you get here?

And, you know, we continued to talk from there. But congrats and a shout out to Patrick Stacy. He heard me. He heard what I was saying. And he had a guy that I’m really, really excited about.”

I believe the Gainey/Stacy combo is going to give us more balance than the Wade/Stacy combo. And I say that because Will Wade doesn’t have that ‘old-school feel’ I mentioned earlier. Wade was a grad assistant who played golf in high school. Meanwhile, Justin Gainey played basketball in the ACC, was mentored by some of the greatest coaches in NC high school history, and has spent a lifetime in locker rooms both as a player and a coach.

He’s not only got all of that knowledge stored up, but he’s now equipped with the answers to just about any question he might have, thanks to Stacy’s advanced analytics. Want a little taste of what I’m talking about…

Here are just a few of the pages from the nearly 20-page advanced scouting report that Stacy prepares for the staff every game. Player by player scouts, opponent points of weakness, suggestions on areas of attack. The reports are unlike anything we’d ever seen.

This is why, in the analytics arms race, NC State has an advantage.

Now, pair that with a coach who has spent his life around the game, studied under some of the toughest-nose, old-school coaches in college basketball, but has a willingness and a desire to sharpen his strategy with analytics. I think Wolfpack fans have a lot to be excited about.