Elevate Your Game through Sports Analytics with Maya Love

Data is the lifeblood of modern sports. It powers decisions, strategies, and player performance. From advanced analytics that fine-tune athletic techniques to the fan engagement that data-driven insights provide, its role is undeniable. How can harnessing data be the game-changer you've been looking for? In this episode, I had an enlightening conversation with Maya Love, Founder of Mile High Analytics, an organization that helps young student athletes through data-driven curriculum. We discussed the powerful application of data for positive outcomes, differences between generation gaps, and community support. Our conversation also touched upon the significance of support networks, diverse perspectives, and striking a balance between challenges and action. Get in the game – start listening now. --- Listen to the podcast here: Elevate Your Game through Sports Analytics with Maya Love Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We live in an era of big data. There's a lot of data being collected, a lot of data being used, and a lot of it being used for many different purposes, and one of the things that's always fascinated me is how do we use this data for something good? How do we use this data for something that's really going to help humanity as opposed to the joke I always make, help Instagram identify the moment you get pregnant so they can bombard you with diaper ads? My guest today, Maya Love, is a college basketball player as well as the founder of Mile High Analytics, where she helps people and organizations use their data for a lot of these kinds of good outcomes. --- Maya, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Well, I'm so excited to have you here because I do want to understand we tap into a lot of power with all this data collection that started really in earnest roughly when Google became the default internet search around 20 years ago or something like that and, obviously, kind of like how money is, kind of like how influence is, all these things, they're all tools, they’re tools that can be used for --- they're neither good nor bad until they're used by someone to do a certain thing. What do you see as the biggest challenge in this era that we've kind of somewhat recently entered where we have all this data and want to use it for things that are really going to help humanity? Starting off with the heavy hitters. I think a main challenge is to understand that these things are tools. I think I come from Gen Z and probably on the older side of Gen Z where a lot of our experience with these tools, per se, actually were intertwined with identity. When you look at Instagram, it's less about networking or connecting with maybe a friend you --- I know you used to have pen pals that you kind of met in a nice Discord chat but now, it can easily become an identity, how many likes, how many posts, have to have everything perfect layout, and so I think the first step is acknowledging that it is a tool, a very powerful tool, with so much information and access out there and with identifying it as a tool, I think next comes the educational piece, which I really like to be in that kind of wheelhouse with sports and data. There are so many ways to get out there and play, be active, and you can incorporate the data so whether you're trying to perfect your shot, Steph Curry did that with the researcher at Berkeley using machine learning, or you're really just trying to understand, okay, how does Messi kick, I'm this intrigued six-year-old, and getting out there and still going outside in nature. So I do see a balance of these tools but kind of having to break it down and being very intentional and I think that comes from the leaders around us and being intentional on how they're describing it, kind of the rules of play, but also just being innovative and not scared of it and allowing it in the classroom because, as we've seen, it is so useful --- people learn different ways and it allows us different touch points to say, okay, this guy on YouTube, I like his cadence. Again, doing Twitch, I love the way she outlined how to study. And so, again, there's just so many things that we're learning about ourselves and, at the same time, I think boundaries that come with anything good. What is the general process of using kind of these math, this numbers, statistics, whatever, to improve athletic performance? Because I think a lot of people tend to think of these things as far apart, you go to high school and you're either the nerd that loves numbers or you’re the athlete that loves to play the sport. What does the merging together kind of look like? I mean, my own personal story, it's all about packaging your --- I use this word again but just your story and your narrative and so if I'm, say, a very strong defensive player and I'm getting ground balls, I'm creating turnovers, that is something that I can communicate to a coach by saying, “Hey, my freshman year, I was averaging maybe four turnovers per game on the other side of the team, now, my turnover rate is eight,” and just to kind of fill in that type of narrative and saying here you can see there's growth potential and also consistency to my dedication to the game. But, oftentimes, I think I had a really cool feature in the AP Statistics who allowed us to take a real world example that impacted us as a study. So I was able to study my own stats, I was able to say, okay, maybe I have to work on the three pointe a little bit more, the stats aren't growing, just want to demonstrate that that's something that I'm committed to. But, again, I think that type of innovation and that teacher willing for us to tell our own story, build it and get comfortable was just incredible and I think definitely tip my hat to him. And is part of it also determining what to work on? And would the stats ever say something along the lines of I’m just remembering my childhood and watching Shaq and he was famous for being such a powerful dunker and such a terrible free throw shooter. Right. Will the stats ever say, “Okay, Shaq, it's okay that you can't shoot free throws as long as you keep doing what you're doing well,” or would sometimes it will say, “Hey, you should work on this”? That's the power of a team. There's stat and information and then there's that culture piece.Share on X So, of course, Shaq --- that’s also what I was going to say, he will just hit two, some would get three or four, but then on the other side, it’s like okay, if we're already going to have this negative margin, that means the rest of your team needs to fulfill it in some way or form. It's kind of like playing chess really. It's like, alright, if Shaq’s not going to make the nine free throws we need, we know we're going to have to get those nine points in the first half. Because, again, some teams do amazing in the third quarter, some teams don't and so if you know however your team's swing, okay, run a deficit at minus three in the third quarter, then, again, that first second, we're going to have to overload just for that. And so I think there's a lot of creativity, and also just psychology, sports psychology, I think that's where you bring them in and say, “Okay, what's going on behind these free throws? What are you imagining? What do you need to imagine?” And I think that’s a great example of how people will always, always be in the middle of this data mix and of this kind of business insights, that's more what I see as opportunity and less as a moment of fear of like, will I be replaced? Well, no, because who's going to study the brain and the things that are just so hard to put in numbers? Yeah, and a lot of the psychological stuff are hard to put into numbers and having studied some natural as well as social science, I know the difference. I know how, in natural science, a correlation coefficient of 0.75 is considered garbage, whereas in social science, a correlation of 0.5 is a reason to party, there's like this huge difference between the erraticness of how human behavior and psychology works versus how you can actually study, say, the force of gravity and the wind resistance and how they will impact the terminal velocity of a raindrop. Two different sides but they still have their benefit. Yeah. Now, growing up, were you interested in basketball and athletics first and then math and numbers or did they kind of coincide with it? I definitely think I was very active in my youth but I also really enjoyed school and so I think I never could say I had one favorite subject but definitely sports, if that was a subject. I have to say I covered it all. I did ice skating, gymnastics, ballet, it was just trying everything and seeing what stuck I think I really enjoyed basketball because of the team aspect and how, again, you just don't rely on yourself, there's a lot of life lessons of just committing to your role, committing to the dedication, a lot of the process you'll hear but I would say math really came up in middle school where I just found myself not necessarily great at it but it was just so intriguing, it was starting to click, and then I didn't really recognize it but when you're trying to prepare to get recruited in college, really, you're kind of doing your own stats. You're doing averages, the ways that you can leverage yourself, especially if you're not six foot like myself, I’m five ten, got to get a little bit more creative with how you're pitching yourself and saying your instant impact, whether, for me, it was I think defense and rebounding was something that I knew instantaneously. I just like to do kind of the grunt work, but it was really in high school, I would say, they started to cross as just realizing my stats,...