An average work day for Ben Klein is filled with meetings, coding, numbers, and analytics. This might be normal for some, but Klein’s job turns more unusual when its revealed that all the hard work and numbers revolve around basketball.
It’s so rare that Klein believes his job as Michigan State men’s basketball's official Analytics and Sports Scientist is one of very few in the nation. His job means that he is the person in charge of all of the data and analytics collected from the sports science side to the sports specific side.
It’s the cutting edge of using analysis to find another competitive edge for the Spartans.
“I come up with the ways we can enhance our players’ performance both on the court physically, but also from a tactical site as well while additionally trying to find ways that we can minimize injury risk,” Klein, 25, said. “By utilizing all the data that we collect we can maximize the performance, tactical and health side of each guy on the team which hopefully will allow us to win more.”
Klein started his sports science career at Ohio State in Fall 2018, when OSU was starting its sports science department. He admits he was more focused on working for OSU sports over school.
“I pretty much interned full time. I really didn't go to class ever. I always made the joke about what's gonna be more valuable later on, interning full time for Ohio State or going to class? I thought how many people can say that they did that,” said Klein. “So I interned my entire undergrad, and got exposed to every piece of technology you could think of in sports performance. That really diversified so many different avenues of how you could utilize data for me.”
Klein reached out to Division I schools and amassed a spreadsheet containing over 500 contacts of strength coaches or sports scientists for every Power 5 university. Michigan State’s sports science department was interested in Klein. He did a phone interview in Oct. 2021 for a sports science graduate assistant position. MSU was interested, telling Klein to reach back out at a later date.
In Jan. 2022, Klein contacted MSU, despite being days away from moving to Las Vegas for an internship with the UFC. He immediately received an email back stating that the position was his, all he needed to do was apply to graduate school. The catch? He had a week to do so.
Klein wasn’t planning on going directly to grad school, so he spent his final week in Columbus scrounging for recommendations and trying to take the GRE, a test needed for his application. Things got so chaotic that he took the GRE in his mom’s hotel room on the Las Vegas strip, the day he moved there.
Klein was accepted into MSU in April 2022, and claimed the spot as Sports Science Graduate Assistant. In Sept. 2024, he moved up to his current position.
One of the ways Klein is able to do his job is with the help of sports technology devices such as Catapult, Force Plates, and NordBord. They measure certain athletes' advanced statistics that wouldn’t be possible to do manually.
“If you watch sports, I’m sure you have seen guys wearing sports bras. These are the Catapult devices that have a GPS tracker inside that tracks all players movements, essentially their load management. In big terms we’re tracking if the guys are going at the volume we want them to, the amount of work we want them exerting in each practice, then we apply it to games,” said Klein.
In the weight room, Klein uses Force Plates to track force, power, and velocity of their jumping abilities.
“Force Plates tell us all of that, but also asymmetrical differences. When they're jumping, are they favoring one leg over the other when they're loading into the ground, taking off, or landing? We also use a device called NordBoard which tracks their hamstring strength so we can see if their hamstrings are firing off at the same rate.”
Someone that has helped Klein immensely when it comes to the weight room technology is Dr. Lorenzo Guess, the MSU’s director of athletic performance and a former MSU basketball player.
“He has been really great with helping me connect the dots to all of this. Him being the Director of Athletic Performance, and being a former player under (Head) Coach (Tom) Izzo has really helped me learn and try to expand how we can utilize this data together,” said Klein.
Between the two of them, there is tons of athletic performance data being collected to share with the rest of staff and the team.
MSU junior center Carson Cooper takes Klein’s statistics seriously to help improve his game. Cooper believes that they’re not just informative, but a huge motivator for each player.
“Seeing the data collected and shown to us is really good to see. It's a great way to work on yourself to push yourself not just against other players, but also against yourself to build on current skills and get stronger. The numbers are a cool way to see what kind of improvements you’ve made,” said Cooper.
The stats can be personalized to whatever information players are interested in finding out about themselves that day because everyone gets their stats individually tracked.
“Sometimes after a game I might be really warm and jump about 18 inches, where in comparison to a morning lift I might not be as activated yet and jumping about 15 inches,” said Cooper. “Being able to track this exact information can tell us that our bodies need to be getting better stretched and more activated beforehand, which can also prevent injuries.”
There are plenty of other devices Klein implements into the teams training such as EliteForm, a velocity-based training device or shot trackers athletes put on their shoe to connect to the ball and measure every step and shot.
Klein, who does not come from a basketball background, is able to take a step back and look at all of the data he collects objectively.
“Members of the staff can take that information and think about it from their terms and how they want to coach and digest all the information. For me, I have to be completely objective and think to myself this is what the data is showing right now, or be able to think about how we can utilize this information to increase our teams performance too,” said Klein.
It's important for Klein to be creative in utilizing data and think differently than everyone else.
“I have to think differently in terms of what the data shows when we collect it and what's going to be easy for a coach or staff member to understand. The way I think is going to be very different from everyone else because we as people interpret things differently. For me, I ask myself how I can take all of this complex information and make it as simple as I can,” said Klein.
A big part of this process for Klein is communicating and building relationships with players and staff. Being close allows him to understand how each individual takes in data and breaks it down in ways he’s sure that person will be able to dissect and digest.
“I try to customize it to a way they’ll understand it. If they don’t, that's where the communication skills of knowing and being able to talk through it and come up with ways together in a simple enough way that they can understand and have conversations about it,” said Klein.
Klein loves when coaches understand his information, so everyone’s on the same page, but he also welcomes occasional disagreement because that helps expand his way of thinking.
Some of the most important relationships Klein has formed are his relationships with assistant coaches. The information that is discussed between Klein and the assistant coaches eventually moves up to Izzo for him to try and utilize also.
“I work really closely with the assistants while also maintaining a relationship with Coach Izzo because there’s different things that they want to see and look at. I'm able to create relationships with every coach on staff and try to find ways to utilize this data in ways that they each want to.”
Having the players' trust has helped the team adapt to this equipment since it’s a new concept for many.
“I have a really good relationship with them, and they've been amazing. That's one really cool part, and I’m fortunate that every guy on the team wants to know their numbers now. This is where it's an educational aspect of what we do. They want to know how they're progressing and how they can adapt,” said Klein. “The coolest part is they’ll push me immediately after they finish a set or jump and ask what their numbers are. They’ve created a competitive edge within themselves and each other.”
Cooper agrees the technology Klein implements brings a competitive edge to their workouts.
“The weight room technology is cool to see in numbers. We kind of use it as a competition with the team as well to push ourselves even further,” added Cooper.
Cooper sees Klein spending lots of time with the team as the key to its great relationship. He’s able to help each player with whatever they personally want to improve on.
Collecting data is just part of Klein’s responsibilities. He also needs to take the information and dissect it.
On a non-gameday, Klein typically arrives at the Breslin Center around 8:30 a.m., and the days often start with a morning lift for the team where he will collect data. After that, there are normally meetings for staff to go over the data and share thoughts.
Klein said he has two types of “busy” work: His afternoon busy work which doesn’t require as much focus in case he gets pulled to do something else, and his nighttime busy work, when tells himself to lock in and really get stuff done.
“I would say the afternoon is more about analyzing numbers. I look at everything we track and try to look at the numbers as a whole, just trying to find trends, it's like the fun puzzle side of it,” said Klein. “Once I have the information I want to look at I scribble it down and try to visualize it. I ask myself ‘How do I want it to look?’ because a massive part of what I do is selling the information. And how do you sell information? You have to keep it simple, but also clean.”
When afternoon practices are complete and it becomes night, Klein spends a few hours creating his own code to enter in the information he collected that day and build visuals. This is when he organizes and makes full sense of his findings.
When breaking it down into simple terms, Klein compares his day to a chef’s.
“If you’re a chef, the morning is when you’re going to the market, picking the ingredients, and trying to figure out what you want to make that day. At night is when I take the ingredients and turn them into something,” said Klein. “From a coding perspective, this is when I can make different algorithms or different types of statistical reports so I take an hour or two to lock in and design those.”
Michigan State has had analytics experts in the past. It wasn’t until Klein’s arrival in East Lansing that the basketball team had a dedicated sports scientist.
This year, he has both roles in one.
Klein credits the team's student managers with helping him tackle the grunt work.
“They’re immensely helpful and I couldn't do half my work without them. They’ll go through a lot of film for me and clip each play and label then upload that data to a designated file then I go through and dissect it,” said Klein. Not only does it take a lot of time but a lot of skill and they do an amazing job at it.”
Klein believes MSU is unique because they have an expert in every department.
“Interacting with all these different people allows you to develop a diverse mindset and see different perspectives on how you can look at data. Because everyone's going to think differently in some cases, it allows you to be different and that's a really good thing,” said Klein.