Bouncing Back: HLA Alicante Continue Their Rebuild with Hudl Focus
We spoke to HLA Alicante’s assistant coach Alberto Carrillo about the aspirations of this recently-formed club and how technology fits into their goals.
Fundación Lucentum (HLA Alicante for sponsorship purposes) are the club that represents the historic Mediterranean port town of Alicante, a city with proud basketball culture that has had NBA caliber players such as Jose Calderon, Kyle Singler and Juan Ignacio Sanchez on their books at one time.
Previously known as CB Lucentum, the former Liga ACB (first division) side dissolved due to financial difficulties in 2013 and gave its place in the Nacional (fifth division of Spanish basketball) to Fundación Lucentum in order to save basketball in the city.
Since then, it’s been an upward rise for Alicante’s new team, with a runners up position in their first season, followed by promotion to LEB Oro (second division) in their fifth season (2018-19).
We spoke to HLA Alicante’s assistant coach Alberto Carrillo about the aspirations of this recently-formed club and how technology fits into their goals.
“Our main goal is to maintain consistency in this league and become an important team in this league, a playoff team, then to get ready to be promoted to the top division within two or three years” said Carrillo. “In terms of the structure of our club, we want to grow as a club and have better organization in all areas of the club, technology is one of key areas as it gives us much better structure in how we analyze our performances.”
Last season HLA Alicante introduced Hudl Focus smart camera technology to modernize the way their coaching team can capture and analyze game footage.
“With Hudl Focus, we save so much time as we don’t have to set up any camera equipment or have a person man a camera, everything is pre-installed and automatic,” said Carrillo. “Previously we would have to record practices manually then use an external drive with the exported video before we could even look at analyzing the footage.”
"We want to grow as a club and have better organization in all areas of the club, technology is one of key areas as it gives us much better structure in how we analyze our performances.”Alberto Carrillo - Assistant Coach of HLA Alicante
Hudl Focus cameras are installed in HLA Alicante’s gym, automatically capturing training footage and sending it to the Hudl.com online platform. After practice, Carrillo logs into Hudl, analyzes the footage and makes clips for specific players to send out as individual feedback, allowing the coaches to work with players both individually and collectively.
“We can begin recording with just one click and the footage is sent immediately and automatically to our account on the Hudl online platform, whereas in the past I had to wait one whole day for the footage to arrive before my work could begin. The main improvement has been speeding up the process of finding the right content that we want to look for.”
Hudl Focus technology provides both a panoramic view and a tactical view, which automatically follows the ball from side to side. This is a huge step up in modernization from the previous manual recording workflow.
“The quality of the pictures is high with the Focus camera and the multiple camera angles allow us to see the game from so many different positions, especially the panoramic view and tactical view which follow the ball automatically,” said Carrillo. “The whole capture setup and multiple angles work very well.”
When asked how HLA Alicante play their basketball, the answer was clear: “To play with energy, aggressive on and off the ball, claiming rebounds and getting fast breaks down the court. The HLA Alicante team believe that having the latest analysis technology gives them the best possible chance to best implement their play style with success."
"We use the video to check mistakes, or things players need to improve on practically alongside the plans of the head coach,” said Carrillo. “We can recognize how our offensive and defensive setups are being run properly, not only in an individual sense, but also collectively.
“The key for our club is that the video doesn’t lie, we can now effectively show the players how to improve. Sometimes you can talk to players and try to convince them but with video evidence it’s always easier. Using video analysis isn’t just for the coaches to make pointers, but it’s also about the players to critique themselves in order to improve. Improving through video allows us better chances at producing good results.”
