As a basketball coach, statistics are a vital part of your arsenal. Unfortunately, it often takes countless hours and multiple statisticians to record and then compile the statistics for a single game. Digital Scout Basketball reduces the time and manpower needed to scout games. Its is also very beneficial in keeping track of your own teams statistics.

Digital Scout was very user friendly. I received the Digital Scout program in the mail about a week after placing my order. I happened to be getting ready to go scout a game when my mail came so I was going to have an immediate chance to test the ease of use. I quickly opened the package and followed the instructions in the detailed user manual. Installation was a breeze with the self-installing program on the CD-ROM. I decided that I would wait and setup the PC part of the program after I got back from my game.

At the game I took out my palm and began to actually take a look at the program. I put in the registration code from the manual and started to add teams. Adding a new team was surprisingly simple. Although blanks exist allowing you to input the coach's name as well as the team nickname you are only required to input the team name to proceed. Adding a new player is equally simple. Here the only required field is the jersey number. Once you have both teams entered into the database you can add a new game. To add a new game you'll need the date of the game and the home/away teams.

Here are some screenshots of the team, player, and game entry screens

The actual scouting of the game events was somewhat intimidating at first. I was unsure of whether or not I would be able to follow the action on the floor and accurately record each event. Note it is possible to keep the statistics for only one team, but you'll still need to have at least 5 players for the other team before you can access the scout screen. The screen where you keep track of the statistics is laid out very nicely. Each of the 8 different statistical categories are in two rows across the top of the screen, the numbers for the 5 active players of the home and visiting team are shown in columns on the right and left-hand sides of the screen respectively, and there is a half-court diagram in the middle section of the screen. Across the bottom of the screen are buttons allowing you to exit this screen (done), to make substitutions, to undo your last entry, and to clear the x on the screen if you have mistakenly placed it somewhere.

Following the action was difficult at first, but it only took a little more than a half to get accustomed to the keystrokes required to enter an event. In the beginning the hardest part was knowing where each of the buttons is, but once you begin to memorize where the buttons are you'll notice that it gets much easier to keep up with the flow of the game. I would recommend that novice users begin by selecting to keep track of shots only, or shots, fouls, and rebounds. As you gain more experience you'll be more prepared to follow all of the game events. Digital scout requires only a few simple keystrokes to record and event. For most of the categories you simply tap the button of the category and then tap the player number. To record a shot you click on the half-court diagram marking the spot corresponding to the spot of the shot and then you tape either made/missed and then the number of the player who took the shot. Making a substitionis also quick and simple. A tap on the subs button takes you to the substituion screen. Then you simply tap the new player and select which player to replace.

The biggest time saver when using digital scout is the automated calculation features. A quick glance at the statistics screens will give you all the info that you need. The shot charts are also terrific. Having both team and individual shot charts is a big advantage. A quick sync to your desktop is all it takes to be able to print out complete statistical reports for the games. An added feature of the desktop software is the ability to combine the statistics from certain games. This will allow you to have the preseason statistics combined on one sheet and the regular season statistics combined on another sheet. If you have a player(s) that want to know their cumulative statistics for a season, maybe for recruiting or all-star purposes these features might be important.