The motion-tracking SportVU cameras that will reportedly be used in all 29 NBA arenas this fall will also be installed in Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium, according to a Wall Street Journal story.
Duke will be the first college to fully embrace Stats LLC's SportVU system, which codes the location coordinates of the players, referees and ball 25 times per second. The Blue Devils got a first look at the technology when they played in Philadelphia during the 2013 NCAA tournament. Impressed with the system's insights, coach Mike Krzyzewski and his staff decided to allow SportVU to install cameras at Cameron Indoor Stadium as well as the practice courts adjacent to the arena.
"You add 75 or 100 practices when the quality of your opponent is the same every day, and you can get a much better picture of who a player is," Kevin Cullen, Duke's director of information technology, told the Wall Street Journal.
The Blue Devils won't be the only college team to take advantage of SportVU this year. The Marquette Golden Eagles, who share the BMO Harris Bradley Center with the Milwaukee Bucks, will also receive data from their home games.
The cameras are pretty expensive ($100,000 per year for NBA teams), and so not all colleges will be able to afford them. But if they have the same impact at Duke as they've had in the NBA, many top colleges will surely be following in Coach K's lead.
