College scouting reports anything but light reading

The Air Force Academy attracts smart kids, and that’s a good thing for the basketball team. Some of their toughest homework assignments might be digesting the scouting report for each opponent.

“Our scouting reports are similar to a term paper,” Falcons coach Jeff Reynolds said. “They’re going to be 25-30 pages thick.”

Actually, Reynolds sold his report a little short. For one late-season opponent, it was 38 pages.

Air Force’s hockey team has similar intelligence on the roster, but its scouting report is Cliffs Notes compared to the basketball team’s novel. The hockey report is usually about a page and a half. The same goes for Colorado College’s hockey team, another intelligent unit. Its scouting report fits on the front and the back of a sheet of paper.

Many basketball and hockey teams have huge games this week — Air Force basketball and hockey and CC hockey all have conference tournament games — but will prepare far differently for them.

Reynolds said about 65 percent of what Air Force does each week changes based on the opponent. Air Force hockey coach Frank Serratore and CC coach Scott Owens agreed that about 80 percent of what their teams practice is perfecting their own system, having nothing to do with the opponent.

“Most teams have their main template they use,” Owens said. “We try to play pretty consistently, but we’ll look at a lot of tape for tendencies, and make adjustments.”

And compare hockey to the other extreme of football. Most football coaches hand out heavy binders to their players each week with the scouting report. Broncos coach Josh McDaniels said last season that he changes his team’s entire offensive and defensive game plan based on weaknesses in that week’s opponent.

Reynolds doesn’t compile each report. Each member of his staff is assigned a team. The reports are intensive, including player tendencies, key stats, basic notes on the offensive and defensive scheme and diagrams of just about any play the Falcons can expect during the game. Reynolds said he didn’t think Air Force’s reports were much different than any other college basketball team.

And basketball game plans change drastically. For instance, before Air Force played Utah on Feb. 24, Reynolds said because Utes 7-foot-3 center David Foster likes to stay inside, Air Force’s forwards had to step out and hit shots. That’s what the team concentrated on in practice.

“In our preparation, we’ll spend a lot of time on our bigs getting shots at the top of the key,” Reynolds said.

Against a team that likes to press on defense like San Diego State, Reynolds said practices are much different.

Hockey teams spend most of their time trying to perfect what they do best. The scouting report on the opponent is pretty simple — a rundown of the lines, some notes on the goaltender, any set faceoff plays, anything unusual and notable, and most of the report is on the power-play and penalty-killing schemes.

The sports have fundamental differences, because hockey is more fluid and it’s harder to predict where a player might be on the ice.

“In basketball, you can get the ball and dictate which way you want to move to shoot,” Serratore said. “In hockey, you better move or you’re going to get knocked on your behind.”