College Basketball Coaches Prioritize Analytics Over Sportsmanship

The NCAA's advanced metrics incentivize teams to maximize efficiency, even at the expense of traditional good sportsmanship.

Published on Feb. 20, 2026

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The rise of advanced analytics in college basketball, including the NCAA's official NET Rankings, has led coaches to prioritize maximizing their team's statistical performance over sportsmanship. From running up the score late in blowout wins to avoiding putting in end-of-bench players, coaches are making strategic decisions to appease the computers rather than uphold traditional norms of good sportsmanship. This has created controversy, with some coaches taking exception to opponents' perceived lack of respect, even in non-conference games.

Why it matters

The use of advanced analytics to determine NCAA Tournament seeding has fundamentally changed the way college basketball coaches approach the game. While the goal is to create the most objective selection process possible, the unintended consequence has been a shift away from sportsmanship as coaches seek to maximize their teams' statistical profiles, even at the expense of traditional norms of fair play.

The details

College basketball features a variety of advanced analytics models, including KenPom, Torvik, and the NCAA's official NET Rankings, that aim to predict outcomes and rank the best teams. These models condense each win and loss into numerical values that measure offensive efficiency, defensive efficiency, strength of schedule, and other factors. Coaches have responded by altering their scheduling and in-game strategies to optimize these metrics, such as avoiding home-and-home series in favor of neutral site games and continuing to score late in blowout wins to boost their efficiency numbers. This has led to instances of perceived poor sportsmanship, with coaches taking exception to opponents running up the score or not putting in end-of-bench players.

  • In a recent February non-conference matchup, Memphis coach Penny Hardaway took exception to Utah State's MJ Collins scoring two more points late in a blowout win.

The players

Penny Hardaway

The head coach of the Memphis men's basketball team.

MJ Collins

A player for the Utah State men's basketball team.

Jerrod Calhoun

The head coach of the Utah State men's basketball team.

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What’s next

The NCAA and college basketball coaches will likely continue to grapple with the tension between maximizing analytical performance and upholding traditional sportsmanship as the use of advanced metrics becomes more entrenched in the sport.

The takeaway

The rise of analytics in college basketball has created a dilemma for coaches, who must balance their desire to optimize their teams' statistical profiles for tournament seeding with the long-held norms of sportsmanship. This has led to controversial instances of perceived poor sportsmanship, raising questions about whether the benefits of maximizing efficiency are worth the cost to the game's traditional values.