Management Fellow-Turned-Coach Brad Stevens '99 Uses Stats to Motivate and Win

November 9, 2011

103054 November 9, 2011, Greencastle, Ind. — "If money were no object, there is one element Brad Stevens would add to Butler's basketball program," begins an Indianapolis Star story published today. "Not an opulent practice facility. Nor a university jet to transport the Bulldogs to road games. 'I'd probably create a statistics division,' the coach said." (top photo: Kelly Wilkinson/Star)

David Woods reports, "Analytics have gained widespread acceptance in many areas of business, and Stevens, a self-described stats geek, has been at the forefront of the movement in college basketball. Stevens, who graduated from DePauw University with an economics degree, uses numbers as a tool to prepare the Bulldogs for games and evaluate their development. That data analysis is one reason Stevens, 35, led Butler to back-to-back NCAA championship games."

"You're so competitive that you just want to find any little thing that might give your guys an advantage out on the floor," Stevens, a 1999 DePauw graduate who played under Tiger head coach Bill Fenlon, tells 72051 the newspaper. "And it's the way I'm built and driven."

According to Woods, "Stevens has motivated the Bulldogs by producing statistics showing they're not as bad as critics might claim. Or the coach has demonstrated how a small statistical improvement -- like two fewer field goals per game by an opponent -- would result in a big difference."

Access the complete story at IndyStar.com.

Brad Stevens, who was also a Management Fellow at DePauw, was named Butler’s head coach on April 5, 2007. He’s compiled a 117-25 record over four seasons, which represents the best start to a career in terms of wins in the history of NCAA Division I.

In June 2010, a half-hour program on FOX Sports Midwest focused on Stevens' success at Butler and included comments from his college coach, DePauw's Bill Fenlon.

On April 13, 2010, Stevens returned to his alma mater to deliver the Robert C. McDermond Lecture.