CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The buzzer sounded from the far end of the court with 9:09 left in Virginia’s ACC Tournament quarterfinals, which meant Matt Hart was suddenly under pressure.
The play was against the Cavaliers’ goaltender, cutting their 11-point lead over NC State to nine. The Virginia judge was outraged.
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“He blocked it first!” yelled assistant coach Griff Aldrich, who believed a defender actually tipped the ball as it came out of Vin Allen Lubin’s hands, which by rule would have negated the goalie.
Virginia head coach Ryan Odom, as he often does when receiving questionable calls, glared at Hart. Hart sat directly behind the coach’s chair, his head buried in his iPad, his fingers moving across the screen like a digital ballerina—a twirl here, a tap there.
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In just ten seconds, he had watched the play several times from multiple angles. Odom stood on the sidelines, awaiting the verdict. Then, without even looking up, Hart put his index finger in the air and spun it around. That’s all Odom needed to see.
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“Any call that seemed close, he would turn to me,” Hart said. “He doesn’t need to say anything. I’m already watching and he believes everything I say. If I say ‘challenge’, he does it. If I say no, he doesn’t do it.”
Hart is officially the director of analytics for Virginia basketball, an important job for a program that is constantly looking for small advantages hidden in the numbers. But his more public-facing role may spark more discussion this March.
For the first time in the NCAA Tournament, coaches will have the option to use timeouts and appeal a limited range of referee calls, including out-of-bounds, goaltending/rim interference and whether a defender’s feet are in the paint. If the coach is right, they can do a second challenge. If they’re wrong, it’s gone.
While the scope of what you can challenge is more limited in college than in the NBA, it’s not far-fetched that at some point this weekend, an instant replay request could determine who advances in the tournament — or, if wrong, cost someone a game.
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That means that for the first time, someone like Hart or the 67 others who share the responsibility could be the heroes of the NCAA Tournament.
Or a goat.
“I love it,” Hart said.
why not? Hart said Virginia had only lost one challenge all year, in an early-season game when they were leading by 25 or 30 points — “there was no stakes at all,” he said. If anything, Virginia prefers the broader ability to use replay, in part because Hart is so good at his job. Likewise, for a staff always looking for an advantage on the edge, a well-timed challenge — like the one they demanded in the North Carolina game that ended with two points in an 81-74 win — is an area Virginia thinks it can exploit.
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“I think we all love it,” Odom told Yahoo Sports. “I’d rather it be like the NBA and be able to challenge something else. I think it’s going to happen in due time. You kind of have to put some spin on these things, but I think it’s going to work out and some big plays happen in the game — and we’ve certainly had a lot of them this year — and maybe another team loses their challenge and they can’t challenge down the stretch. We’ve been very lucky and conservative. I just trust Hart. I trust his judgment.”
The NCAA has increased the challenge for coaches this season in hopes of reducing the number of times officials have to look at the monitors. In the past, they would have looked at almost every out-of-bounds call in the final two minutes, which certainly had noble intentions because everyone wanted the call to be correct. But a forensic examination where the fingertips were the last to touch the ball in every close game can often lead to trouble at the end of the game.
Now, under the new rules, officials can only initiate a review of a goaltender or charging circle call in the final two minutes. If an out-of-bounds problem arises, the coach must use the challenge—which means having a real strategy on how and when to deploy it.
Hart, who averaged 4.0 points per game in two seasons at George Washington University, played some professional ball overseas before being introduced to Odom through a mutual friend and joining the Utah State staff as a graduate assistant in 2022.
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The next year, when Odom left for Virginia Commonwealth University, Hart served as director of analytics, and part of his job on the bench was to monitor games via an iPad and give the team play-by-play looks at halftime.
Virginia’s director of analytics, Matt Hart, plays a key role during games in deciding whether to challenge calls. (Dan Walken/Yahoo Sports)
This made the transition very smooth when the challenge system was introduced via DVSport, whose software platform allows him to track matches with minimal latency (usually only around two seconds).
Early in the season, when the system was still new, it was difficult for Hart’s role to get challenge calls quickly enough because referees would just move on to the next play immediately. But as the season progressed, ACC senior vice president of men’s basketball Paul Brazeau said officials were told to allow a few extra seconds in close games to allow the bench to make decisions.
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Hart said he spoke with his NBA counterparts before the season started to understand how challenges would be used and looked at analytics that showed the value of using challenges increases the closer to the end of the game.
“When you get it down to one minute, two minutes, every possession is more valuable,” Hart said. “So, we only use it in the first half if you’re 100 percent positive. If there’s a problem, it’s not worth it. I don’t use it that often where I’m not sure. I only use it when I’m sure we’re going to get it. So that’s the way I look at it, unless we’re down, it’s just a Hail Mary.”
Another piece of data collected by VA is that approximately 90% of the calls they will challenge are out of bounds, and 75% of challengeable calls occur at baseline. So when Hart watches a game on his iPad, he pretty much just speeds up the viewing process with baseline camera angles. All told, Hart has access to six different cameras, which he can check with just the swipe of his finger.
At the end of the day, it’s entirely up to him whether to challenge or not.
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“He told me very quickly yes or no,” Odom said. “He’ll do his best. If he’s not sure, he’ll [shake his head no]. But sometimes officials tell me, “I think I’m right,” but [Hart] In fact, that’s right. “
Every coach handles it a little differently. Duke’s Jon Scheyer, for example, will ask his video coordinator, Trevor Marcus, what they’re seeing on an iPad, but will sometimes ask to watch the game in person before signaling a challenge.
This is understandable because ultimately the head coach is responsible for how the timeout is used regardless of whether the challenge is successful or not. Now that it has become a factor in the NCAA tournament, the consequences are dire. One wrong challenge — or failure to challenge a bad call — could end someone’s season.
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The stakes weren’t that high for Virginia in the ACC Tournament, where they advanced to the finals but lost to Duke 74-70. But nonetheless, the game against NC State was another validation moment for the Cavaliers’ challenging process. After studying the monitors for several minutes, the referees saw in real time what they had missed: big man Tess Dredd blocked the shot before the goalie, making the game clean.
Hart was right again.
“I have [the iPad] “At the perfect angle,” he said. “Goalie, even though it doesn’t happen a lot, these are very valuable because it’s actual points you can get back. So we got two points back today.”
He hopes to do the same on Friday when Virginia, the No. 3 seed in the Midwest Region, takes on Wright State. The spotlight will be bright for Hart.
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“I’ve never been in a situation where I felt terrible about losing one,” Hart said. “But the players know this is my job, so when we do a good job, it’s cool and they’re calling my name and Ryan really trusts me.”
