Tale of the Tape
March 16, 2005 12:28 PM | General
March 16, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The minute the announcement came on CBS Sunday evening that West Virginia was going to play Creighton in the first round of the NCAA tournament, basketball administrative associate Mark Murphy and graduate assistant Josh Merkel headed upstairs to the basketball office to begin scouring the thousands of video tapes they’ve collected throughout the year.
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| Administrative associate Mark Murphy began preparing for Creighton the moment they were announced as West Virginia's opponent in the 2005 NCAA basketball tournament.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
It is their job to begin assembling all of the footage needed for the coaching staff to prepare their team scouting reports. In the case of Creighton, which was on television three times recently, Murphy was confident he could get a good start on the Blue Jays.
“I was happy to see Creighton because I knew we had at least three tapes on them,” he said. “They were one of the teams from the Missouri Valley Conference that were on TV from now and then just because of their name and they’ve been in the tournament the past five-six years.”
Murphy doesn’t use a color-coded system like last year’s administrative associate Zach Spiker used, but he does have his own organizational system set up to enable him to retrieve the most obscure of games at a moment’s notice.
“We just label each row with all of the conferences,” Murphy said. “We tape the Big 12 game on Big Monday and it goes on the Big 12 shelf. We have a couple of shelves for just random games where different conferences will be playing each other.”
Collectively, VHS tapes fill two ceiling-high cabinets with at least that many more tapes scattered about in different coach’s offices. Murphy says collecting video footage on every Division I-A basketball team is a year-round job and every major program does it.
“I waited until mid-January to get every game,” he said. “In the beginning of the year we were concentrating on Big East teams and obviously non-conference opponents coming up like N.C. State, LSU and George Washington. Once we got to January 15th it was every single game on TV. We have the Full Court package on four different TVs in here.”
Every Friday morning Murphy gets with Director of Basketball Operations Bill Lilly and Merkel to establish a plan for all of Saturday’s games. In essence they’ve got to try and sift through the wheat and the chaff.
“I’d usually tried to be prepared on Friday for all of the games on Saturday," Murphy said. “I’d get out the schedule from Full Court, ESPN, CBS, ABC, Fox and just set up one big schedule with all the games and I’d narrow it down to which games were important -- making sure we’d get all those because we’ve only got six TVs that we can tape off of at once.”
Murphy, a former Washington & Jefferson point guard and a Pittsburgh native, got his coaching start as a graduate assistant at Robert Morris. He admits Robert Morris didn’t have the resources to cover every game like they do here at West Virginia.
“I did a little bit of this there but we were very, very limited,” he said. “We relied more on film exchange where you’re dealing with other schools. Within the conference there were rules that you could only exchange two tapes per team.”
However, at the high major level Murphy admits there is never really enough you can give a coach. A coaching staff or a team can never be too prepared for an opponent.
“You always want their last game,” said Murphy. “We would rather have their last game as opposed to one we had back on January 15th.”
Consequently, Murphy was happy to see Creighton’s name come up on the board instead of say, Tennessee-Chattanooga. He can empathize with his counterpart at Wake Forest trying to get tape in preparation for their game against UTC Thursday evening.
“Tennessee-Chattanooga we only have one tape on them and that was the championship of their tournament,” Murphy said.
In addition to assembling as many tapes as he can on Creighton, Murphy has to also compile as much information as possible on both UTC and Wake Forest. There are no superstitions when it comes to preparing for a tournament.
“I don’t know if you saw the piece on ESPN but Washington had trouble getting tapes in. That’s what we’re waiting on right now: we’re supposed to get Tennessee-Chattanooga tapes at 10:30 (Tuesday) morning and the shipment didn’t go out until (Wednesday),” Murphy said. “That puts Coach Dunn behind on Chattanooga because, who knows? They could possibly beat Wake. You never know – you have to be prepared for anything.”
Murphy must be prepared for just about any scenario. When West Virginia was in the midst of its losing streak in January he had to start focusing in on teams that might qualify for the NIT. And then a couple of weeks later he had to resume concentrating on NCAA tournament teams when the Mountaineers went on their impressive run.
“Beginning in February we began looking for those possible NIT teams because we had to be prepared for that just in case,” he admitted. “After we went through that stretch in January where we lost five out of six we were changing our thinking a little bit.
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| A small sampling of the thousands of video tapes West Virginia has at its disposal to prepare scouting reports.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
“Then it changed once again when we beat Pitt here. Then it got us back to thinking about looking for the higher RPI teams that were headed for the NCAA tournament,” Murphy added.
Even game planning for the NCAA tournament can be difficult. Once West Virginia began making its run in the Big East tournament Murphy had to start concentrating on teams with higher seeds because West Virginia was also improving its post-season seeding.
“At the end of our season we were thinking we would be a higher seed than seventh. Realistically, we didn’t know that we were going to make that run in the Big East tournament to push us up to a seven so we’re thinking nine, 10 or 11 and you’re playing the high major teams with good records,” Murphy said. “There are a lot of those games on TV so I felt comfortable about that.”
Murphy also has to accommodate each particular coach’s preference as best as he can. What Coach Jeff Neubauer is looking for may be a little different than what Coach Jerry Dunn is looking for or what Coach Matt Brown is interested in when they compile their scouting reports.
Neubauer is responsible for the Creighton scouting report.
“If we have enough tapes where he felt comfortable watching all of their defensive possessions from a couple of prior tapes he’ll just have me go through and cut down all of the offensive possessions,” Murphy said. “Or he might have me take out certain things that he’s looking for from tapes when they played a month ago rather than doing that to the previous two games.”
Murphy says there is no trading protocol with other schools and those that don’t have tapes of their opponent can pay a scouting service $50 for one tape. Usually, however, coaches can make a couple of calls to get what they need from other coaches.
“These coaches in this office have a lot of connections so there are usually people that can help us out,” he said.
By the way, Murphy says Creighton is doing the exact same thing.
“I read an article where they said they at least have all four of our Big East games and we’re on Full Court pretty much the entire second half of the season,” Murphy said, noting that as of Tuesday the Blue Jays probably had more tape on West Virginia than the Mountaineers had on them.
However, Murphy was expecting a package of tapes in the morning mail before the team left for Cleveland later today. He’ll transfer those tapes to Neubauer’s laptop when they arrive at the hotel.
Murphy admits the process is really not that difficult. The basketball office has four video capture devices set up in each of the coach’s offices and he can record four games at one time. The difficult part is waiting the two and a half hours to transfer the tape because all transfer is done in real time.
“While we’re doing one we’re getting tape on someone else’s computer simultaneously and we’re also starting on Wake Forest on Coach Brown’s computer,” Murphy said. “Plus we only have so much space on each computer so we do have to cut it down sometimes.”
Murphy says the actual editing of a game is simple once he gets a game recorded into the system.
“It’s not hard to cut up a game once you get it on to the computer. Going through it on the computer is pretty quick because we’re not rewinding tape or anything like that,” he said.
Therefore, by the time John Beilein left the Coliseum Sunday night Murphy could have had his laptop computer full of Creighton material if he wanted it. But Beilein didn’t have an opportunity to watch any of the Big East tournament games so he spent Sunday night watching just West Virginia tape in preparation for Monday’s practice.
“We were so busy preparing for the next team,” Murphy said.
But rest assured, when Beilein came into the office Monday morning and handed his laptop over to Murphy by lunchtime he could sit back down at his desk, pull out his turkey sandwich and begin watching tape on the Creighton Blue Jays.
It is Mark Murphy’s job to have it ready for him.
