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Good morning. A Power 5 basketball program lands a familiar face, a field guide to using GPS data the right way, and the NCAA's new age-based eligibility model. Let's get into it.
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Virginia men's basketball has hired Luke Toburen as director of sports performance, head coach Ryan Odom announced. Toburen returns to Charlottesville, where he was a graduate assistant from 2020-22 under Mike Curtis - now head of player health and performance for the Memphis Grizzlies.
He spent the last four seasons at Longwood, three under former UVA associate head coach Griff Aldrich, and briefly joined Aldrich at Pepperdine this month before the move. Curtis called him "one of the most gifted" S&C pros he's met in 28 years.
In a new SimpliFaster guide, S&C practitioner Mike B. Brown lays out how to use GPS data beyond heatmaps and team averages by building individual loading blueprints around each player.
His framework:
Build baselines off position, age, and history - team averages hide who's overloaded
Read high-speed running and accel/decel load, not just total distance (decelerations carry the most soft-tissue stress)
Flag any session at 90%+ of a player's weekly HSR average, then talk before deciding
Close the loop with one shared daily report to coaches, medical, and S&C
Ohio University detailed how its football program uses GPS tracking. Associate director of football performance Noah Spielman said the palm-sized units - worn in a training vest or a shoulder-pad pouch - let staff measure workload, intensity, top speed, and high-speed distance in real time.
The staff zeroes in on four or five key measures rather than every data point, shares top speeds to spark competition on max-velocity days, and confirms injured players hit speed targets in return-to-play. "You don't have to live and die by it," Spielman said.
The NCAA Division I Cabinet unanimously voted to approve an age-based eligibility model, On3 reported, a shift from the long-standing four-seasons-in-five framework. Under it, an athlete's eligibility clock starts at initial full-time college enrollment or the academic year after their 19th birthday, whichever comes first, with implementation beginning this summer. Currently enrolled athletes with eligibility left after 2025-26 can use the new model or the old rules, whichever benefits them. The decision isn't final until the Cabinet's meeting concludes Wednesday.
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