The Pac-10 College Basketball Digital Recap

We've made it through the Pac-10. Thanks for sticking with me!

Here's a quick summary of the conference -- what you need to remember, what you need to watch.

First, the rankings, along with a fantasy football-inspired style cheat sheet (super short blurb to describe each program digitally)

1. Stanford - Best basketball section in the conference, by a large amount... and I wouldn't stop at basketball section
2. Oregon - Ducks TV. Ducks TV. Ducks TV.
3. Washington - Great branding and iconography.
4. California - One of the better YouTube channels I've come across.
5. UCLA - Coach Howland is pretty active on Twitter, but the site didn't meet expectations.
6. Washington State - Loaded multimedia tab needs to infuse into the hoops area.
7. Oregon State - I Am Orange and Inside Basketball visuals are powerful, need deeper content.
8. Arizona - Very difficult to find any ways to follow the program.
9. Arizona State - Coach Sendek active on Twitter. Elaborate community structure, no community content.
10. USC - An amazing football site.

My 3 favorite Pac-10 digital features?

1. Stanford's YouTube integration into their basketball site, here. You never leave their site, yet you get all the functionality of YouTube. Killer.

2. Washington's social media iconography, here. It's simple, bold, and consistent. Nicely done.



3. Coach pages taking you to Twitter at Stanford and Arizona State. Stanford is much more visual, but both are effective. If you are looking at a coach's bio, you're extremely likely to be interested in his Twitter feed. Makes complete sense, yet not everyone does it. Nice.




Finally, here's my Pac-10 All-Twitter Team (those you should consider following, not those with the highest number of followers):

Ben Howland, UCLA - very personal on Twitter.

Herb Sendek, Arizona State - active and solid

Cal_Video - Active video team + Twitter = goodness

GoDucksDotCom - All sports, but all around pretty good

Pete Carroll, USC- So strong he even makes the All Pac-10 team in basketball.

Up next?

The Big Ten. That starts Friday...

Tomorrow I'll show off some of the hottest content in the world of College Hoops from the past month. You won't want to miss it!

Tune in tomorrow!

Andy

College Basketball: Digital Pac-10 Preview, #1 Stanford

Welcome back to the final chapter in our digital journey through the Pac-10. I hope you've enjoyed the ride.

Come back tomorrow and I'll give you a full run down of the conference, at a glance. It's your wrap up day.

Our journey through the conference has shown us #10 USC , #9 Arizona State, and #8 Arizona, #7 Oregon State, #6 Washington State, #5 UCLA, #4 California, #3 Washington, and

#2 Oregon.

It's time to crown our champion.

#1 Stanford

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Great URL. Fantastic call outs for just about every way to keep in touch imaginable (blog, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, photos). Good attitude through the site.

Weaknesses: Not much. Podcasts, while having good content, are set up for the department as a whole, not for individual sports.

Full Scouting Report:
Clicking into the Stanford Athletics site here, (Great URL in GoStanford.com), and you're hit with a pretty solid list of entry points including Multimedia, where we will begin our tour.



Highlighting Multimedia gives you a pretty thorough list of next stops. Let's start at the top, with the Facebook/Twitter/YouTube callout.



Clicking here takes us to this page, which is a pretty good overview of the Stanford presence (not just athletics but also university) on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Let's take a look at each of these...

First, the Stanford Athletics Facebook page is updated pretty regularly with news from the athletics department.



Similarly, the Athletics Department Twitter page is also filled with updates here. As of now, there are only around 600 followers. But I like the style of driving updates through many mechanisms.


Here's the Stanford Athletics YouTube channel. It's got a pretty active video wall, but it is lumped all together as a department, not as channels by sport. I'm hoping they fix this before the hoops season gets here and the video count exponentially grows.



OK, back to Multimedia and you'll see the Podcasts call out. Again, this is great to see another way to follow the program but, like YouTube, it is also not set up to be segmented by sport.



OK, moving onward to the next tab, Welcome Recruits. I like this callout a lot, more than just about any Recruiting tab outside of Oregon's aspirational "Be A Duck." So I dove right into Cardinal.Red.Sports.



This took me to a gateway page, which of course I moved into Men's Basketball.



Which took me to this page (below). This is a page that you really should experience too, so I am going to give you a chance by clicking here. It's the home of the Cardinal Men's Basketball program, and it is some kind of amazing.



Let's look around. First, they have an overview of the Academics of Stanford, set to a pretty powerful visual. I think this is important to cover as the University does have an outstanding academics reputation and they cover this alongside the athletics, at a similar level of execution. Solid.


Clicking on Players takes you to the image below, an interactive view of the Cardinal roster. Each player is clickable, and when you do it opens up a new level of content that, to be honest, we haven't seen in any squad yet...


Each player's page includes a Q&A, Stats, and.... Individual Player Highlight Packages! What? So if I go here, I get my own highlight reel on the Stanford site? NICE! Seriously, this is powerful, powerful stuff - and very much world class!



Moving on to the Coaches. Clicking into Coach Dawkins' profile takes you to a page titled, "Getting to Know Johnny." (Shown below).


You see his bio, across playing days and Olympics coaching days. And, of course you see the Twitter icon. You can follow Coach Dawkins on Twitter here, with around 600 followers... for now.



Back in the Cardinal.Red.Basketball section, you'll find a highlights button on the bottom of the page. Clicking in and you get the YouTube Men's Basketball experience I'd longed for earlier... and then some. Check the next two boxes and you'll see one of the better examples of how to integrate a YouTube channel into a team's site. First, with highlights...



... and then, with Features and Player Interviews. Solid. Wow.



Rounding out this amazing section are players in the Pros, a tour of their practice and weight room facilities, and a section about the international travel of this squad (playing games in the summer in Europe). This is really great stuff, completely on another level.






But, wait, I'm not done. Seriously. It is time to click into the Sports, Men's Basketball section. (We haven't even been here yet?) Wow. The big call out is how they integrate YouTube highlights into their site. Look in the main window and ponder why others haven't done this yet. I'm just pumped about this!


Thanks for bearing with me. I know it's been awhile. But it's tough to leave much out. This is a world class site, and I feel smarter for having plowed through it!

Tune in tomorrow for a final recap of our trip through the Pac-10.

Then we'll turn our attention to the middle of the country for our third conference!

Andy

College Basketball: Digital Pac-10 Preview, #2 Oregon

Welcome back to our journey through the Pac-10, from a digital point of view.

So far our journey through the conference has shown us #10 USC , #9 Arizona State, and #8 Arizona, #7 Oregon State, #6 Washington State, #5 UCLA, #4 California, and #3 Washington.

It's down to two....

Here we go.

#2 Oregon

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Great URL in GoDucks.com. Nice visuals. Good social media icons, and the Ducks TV is killer.

Weaknesses: Limited basketball-specific content, or ways to learn about Coach Kent. Basketball twitter site not connected to athletics site.

Full Scouting Report:
Clicking into the UO site, GoDucks.com (link here), and you get a pretty big (and nice) brand impression.


Oregon has a lot going for it, but what I was drawn to first was the Recruiting Tab, called "Be A Duck." That's brilliant. It has attitude, aspiration, and substance. It's MUCH better than simply saying "Recruits." It plants a seed. And I really like this.


That attitude or tone doesn't extend into the content beneath (shown here). You are hit with the standard campus info we've seen just about everywhere that has a section like this.


Next, I'll move to the Multimedia tab, and we get shown a plethora of options to dive into!


First, what's this Basketball on the O-Zone? Clicking in, you see it's a sign up to view live events area. Sounds like you pay for it, though I didn't stick around long enough to see.


But I did see a callout from this page for Oregon Ducks TV (not highlighted in the Multimedia tab) and we get this! It's a pretty sweet video area with athlete features, coach interviews, and a Ducks Sports show. This is great! (Click here to check it out for yourself - it is really cool.)



Oddly enough, on that Multimedia tab there was a call out for their MySpace media player (is anyone using that anymore?) From the image below it was put out there about 3 years ago, and should probably just get taken down. Come on, promote Ducks TV a bit more!



You also see a callout for Blogs on this Multimedia drop down menu. Clicking in takes you here, to a blog directory.



From which you can navigate directly to the Hoops Blog, "On the Sideline", shown below or by clicking here.


Finally, there is a callout for the athletics department Twitter page, link is here, which is updated regularly but is extremely haphazard in who they follow (unless you think a follow to the Carolina Panthers is natural).


Back to the UO homepage, you see the icons in the upper right hand corner. We've covered most of them by now, but I wanted to point out the Facebook site as well. Shown below or links from here, they do a nice job of driving news and updates through this channel.



Finally, I am hitting the UO Basketball page. The branding and icons stay consistent. The icons (as we saw in Washington previously) stay consistent, not taking you into a basketball-specific layer. I wish there was an icon for TV, but I digress...

The hoops blog (profiled above) is elevated on the right hand side. Nice.


You wouldn't know it from the site (which might explain the low following thus far), but there's also a UO Men's Hoops Twitter site (link here). It seems to be updated recently and used to alert on new blog posts, so this will be one to watch. I just hope they promote it in the Hoops section...


Finally, the last thing I wanted to point out here is an interesting use of the Coaching section. Here's a shot of Coach Kent's bio. You'll notice in the right hand side, they have elevated interviews and related interactive content of Coach Kent here, on his bio page. That's really sharp, and impressive.


That's a wrap. In sum, we have a great site with good branding and a great infrastructure -- if they could create basketball specific channels for the Hoops section, we'd be on fire.

Tune in tomorrow as we close out the Pac-10 with our best in class. I wonder who that could be?

Andy

College Basketball: Digital Pac-10 Preview, #3 Washington

Welcome back to our journey through the Pac-10, from a digital point of view.

So far our journey through the conference has shown us #10 USC , #9 Arizona State, and #8 Arizona, #7 Oregon State, #6 Washington State, #5 UCLA, and #4 California.

The three that remain are fantastic. It's a tough showdown. But let's get to it.

#3 Washington

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Fantastic call outs for just about every way to keep in touch imaginable (blog, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, photos). Good attitude through the site.

Weaknesses: Not much basketball depth, info about coach Romar, nor history of the program.

Full Scouting Report:
Clicking into the UW athletics site - GoHuskies.com, here, and you get hit with a fantastic arrangement of icons. There's something nice about the sport icons across the top of the page, and of course there's something nice about the ways to follow UW in those icons to the right... which I'll go into first.



First up, YouTube. I have to admit, clicking on this button (or here) was pretty nice. UW does a solid job of branding and you get a feel that you aren't simply on any old YouTube channel when you click in. I even like the tag, the U-Dub on You Tube.



They don't stop here. Scrolling down on that page (or this one) shows you playlists - right here. It's pretty easy to check out the Husky Men's Hoops videos, sign up to get more, and share them. Plus the videos themselves are really good, behind the scenes content. Overall, really solid.



On to Twitter, shown below and in this link. UW has just north of 4,000 followers. They are also following over 4,000 individuals and there's really no way to use that as a way to explore UW. So while they do a nice job keeping this updated, they miss that chance to help you navigate through the world of Twitter.


Clicking on the photo icon takes you here - you're able to check out various UW galleries, by sport. It's pretty basic, but few do this and it is actually kind of cool.



Moving back to the home page navigation, you see a pretty prominent button for Blogs, referred to as "Dawg Blawg." When you click into the blog, you are able to then filter it by sport. So it is a little manual, but you can get to the point where you're actually looking at hoops only. (Or just click here.)

I moved on to the basketball section now, shown below. Note the icons remain constant in the upper right (but sadly they don't take you to all basketball content -- that'd be amazing!)


Clicking on recruiting takes you here, to a pretty general take on the UW campus. Nothing to see here. Move right along...


Then I clicked on History. I was hoping for something solid here -- they've been to the Dance 14 times and graduated Brandon Roy recently... making for a nice opportunity to storytell about the program... but this is what lied beneath. I guess it is informative.


So UW has a great site. The opportunities are there to make it best in class if they could do two things: 1) leverage those icons in the upper right hand side with Hoops Specific content - whether it be a UW Basketball twitter feed or one from Coach Romar and 2) continue what they've started and communicate that Dawg branding in the voice of basketball. What it means to play for Romar, and what that'd mean for you as a potential student athlete.

Thanks for reading. Come back next week as we wrap up the Pac-10 with the final two programs!

Andy

College Basketball: Digital Pac-10 Preview, #4 California

Welcome back to our journey through the Pac-10, from a digital point of view.

This is where it heats up. The Final 4 (of the Pac-10) in the battle for best digital program.

o far our journey through the conference has shown us #10 USC , #9 Arizona State, and #8 Arizona, #7 Oregon State, #6 Washington State, and #5 UCLA. Let's keep moving...

#4 California

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Good pieces in place - a recruits tab, basketball blog, and athletics department photo gallery and twitter feed.

Weaknesses: Limited depth and excitement once you hit the basketball page. (Which many people might do quickly!). Not much photography or video content.

Full Scouting Report:
I was pretty pumped to look at Cal. I remember feeling excited about that program when Jason Kidd was leading them to the dance. (What a fun team that was!) So with that vision in my mind, I clicked into the Cal athletics site, here. I was quickly hit with some pretty bold navigation. Naturally the two on the far right draw my attention quickly. I click on Multimedia first...



And have to say this isn't what I was hoping for. You can see below - never a good thing when you are hit with a request to buy something you weren't expecting to buy. While live broadcasts of games might be cool, that's not what I was after. I backed out.

The For Recruits section isn't really anything amazing in and of itself either. It is informative, it does tell you a bit about the school, and it does imply the importance of academics at Cal. But it does not give you any personal feeling that an aspiring student-athlete should get. In fact, it really isn't much different than what I'd expect to see on the Cal Academics site.


But things turn around quickly. Hitting back to the athletics home page and scrolling down a bit delivers this image. (Cue harp music!)



I clicked in. NICE! You see a little handy guide to where you can go and follow the program. This is an extra step but it feels... nice.


First, here's the Cal Athletics Facebook page. As you can tell, they do a nice job of breaking news and updates in this space.


Next, YouTube. Here's the link to check it for yourself. It is worth it. But if you just like looking at pretty pictures, stay with me.


I clicked into the Playlists. As you'll see below, there are playlists by sport (and for the band), that allow you to really dive in where you want to.


Naturally, I clicked into the basketball playlist (image below). This is great content, and it allows you to subscribe to receive new Hoops videos when they break. Nicely done!



OK, and finally on to Twitter. Here's a link to the Cal Athletics Twitter page, with a bit north of 900 followers. They are updating this fairly regularly, and are covering all sports.



While I was disappointed to see no coaches were up on Twitter, I was pretty pumped to notice (by looking at the boxes of following in the Cal Athletics Twitter page) there is a Cal Video Twitter site (image below and link here). Why am I excited about a Twitter site with (at type time) only 80 followers? It's about potential. And I fully expect to see the Cal Video team leverage this in season to deliver videos for the Hoops Squad. I'm a follower now.



So I turned my attention at last to the Basketball section. (Image below). I liked seeing the Cal Highlights auto play in that video player on the right hand side of the page.


Beyond this though, there really wasn't a lot of great information on the program. Clicking on Cal players in the Pros was pretty disappointing. It's nice that the info is here, but to link out to a search on ESPN's NBA page left me very underwhelmed. I feel they miss the opportunity to tell a story. And for that story to reinforce who the Cal Bears are as a program...


Which is where I'll end this. The athletics department as a whole has set up a really nice experience, but what's missing is that explanation of what it means to be a Cal Bear. And a way to stay in touch or connect with the current program, via a blog or submit a question or Twitter site.

Tune in tomorrow and we'll move to #3 in the Pac-10!

Andy