ST. PAUL, MINN- Macalester women's basketball senior Grace Dickman (Maspeth, N.Y./Cate School (Calif.)) was invited to present her research at the New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports (NESSIS) at Harvard this September.

NESSIS is a national conference which discusses statistical and quantitative analysis of sports, sports media and university athletics.  Speakers from multiple universities as well as sports media including ESPN presented their research to members of the statistical and sports profession. Dickman presented her research "No 'I' in Team: A network analysis of Division I Men's Basketball Offenses".

Dickman's research is a network analysis model which analyzes the flow of a basketball offense as a social network. The model highlights ball handlers and distributors and the outcomes can be used by coaches to decide who on your team should defend the opposition or who statistically is a team's most successful ball handler and passer. Dickman says this information can be used during game planning but also as a scouting technique.

"It was a cool opportunity to see what being on the analytic side of basketball, and sports in general, would be like," Dickman said. "It's not just analytics in the game, but analytics about team performance, marketing, ticket sales, and athletic training. So it was great to see all different sides of it."

Dickman, who will graduate with a Math degree from Macalester, said that this project was just for fun but that NESSIS became a great opportunity to network with other statisticians, scouts and coaches.