How video analysis is supporting Virtus Bologna’s LBA title defence

Last season Virtus Segafredo Bologna, one of Italian basketball’s most decorated teams, ended its 20-year wait to reclaim the LBA trophy. 

Then in 2021-22, the club brought in World Cup-winning head coach Sergio Scariolo over the summer and added the likes of Ekpe Udoh and Nico Mannion to its growing roster of former NBA talents.

As well as improving the quality available to him on the court, Scariolo was also keen to strengthen the club in other areas, such as video analysis. Iacopo Squarcina, a former Serie A2 head coach with video expertise, was brought in as assistant coach. As too was Spiideo Perform — a powerful, flexible and easy to use sports video recording and analysis platform.

Before, Virtus Bologna’s coaching team had relied on a manual video analysis workflow to capture, prepare and deliver video feedback to their players. Coaches would have to manually film sessions, transfer footage between devices, watch it back and clip footage before it was ready to share.

Now, the recording process is handled by an AI-powered Spiideo camera, which automatically captures a 180 degree view of the club’s training court and instantly uploads footage to Spiideo Perform to enable immediate analysis and playback. The efficiency of Virtus Bologna’s new video analysis process offers greater opportunities to deliver feedback when events are still fresh in the players’ minds.

"During practice now, with Spiideo, we plan to use video during the water break. Before Spiideo, this wasn’t possible," Squarcina explains. "Video is more effective than saying ‘Okay guys, we have to play better defense’ — Now we can tell them and show them why it was not perfect and what we can do to improve."

With tagging a core part of the club’s video analysis process, Spiideo Perform has proven particularly useful. The club has assigned an assistant coach the responsibility of watching training footage in real time through an iPad or iPhone device and using the platform’s live-tagging feature to mark important moments as they occur, eliminating the need to watch footage back after a session.

"We work a lot with tagging – opponent analysis is all based on tagging and we also tag a lot of footage ourselves. Now the time it takes is greatly reduced, which is very, very helpful for us as coaches, but also for us as people — now we can sleep more," Squarcina added.

As well as a good night’s sleep, the Spiideo system will also provide Bologna’s coaching team with more time to do what actually makes the difference: creating and delivering video feedback that helps the club and its players to progress.

And soon, the coaching team will have even more footage to utilize. The club plans to add a multi-angle Spiideo camera setup to its new arena, which will provide new views to analyze and allow the head coach to request more specific footage to share with the players.

"It’s something that can change our way of work, our system and make feedback more effective for the players – because that’s the goal: to work as much and as best as we can for them. To be more effective with video means we can be more effective in coaching."

 – Iacopo Squarcina, assistant coach, Virtus Segafredo Bologna

Between his two roles with Virtus Bologna and the Spain national team, Scariolo spends plenty of time on the road travelling to and from games and tournaments. When selecting a video analysis solution for the club, it was important that footage could be easily accessed without requiring access to a local server or downloading vast video files.

"With Spiideo, you don’t have to download and keep it on your laptop or an external hard drive," Squarcina explains. "It’s all in the cloud." 

Captured footage is stored by Spiideo and accessible over the internet through Spiideo Perform. Coaches can watch back any moment, create tags, clips and presentations; and collaborate with their fellow coaches from anywhere in the world through their web browser or on any Apple device.

Between late October and early November, Virtus Segafredo played five games in just 14 days, four of which were away matches that included EuroCup trips to Turkey and Montenegro.

With such a hectic list of games, the time the team gets to spend on the training court is often limited. However, Squarcina believes video feedback provides an alternative way for players to continue their development away from the court:

"Playing so much means less time to practice, less time on the court, so it’s important to use video as practice," Squarcina says. "I think for a player, spending five minutes, one minute, 20 minutes watching video each day can change their approach to the game — If you learn how to handle the feedback you receive from video, you can make less mistakes and make the team better. That’s the goal."

Without a reliable, automated video analysis system, this would be a monumental task for the club’s coaching team with so little time to spare between games. But Spiideo Perform is now handling the legwork.