With the action being so fast moving and constant, keeping track of some statistics for high-school basketball games, girls or boys, is more challenging than other sports.
If paying close attention and never taking eyes off the ball, it’s easy to record which players score, whether a field goal or a foul shot, and who takes a shot. Same with steals and, usually, blocked shots.
The real state-keeping challenges can be recording the correct assists and rebounds.
With assists, the stat-keeper has to think and remember backwards. Which player made that pass? Anticipating an assist helps recording category sometimes, as well.
Rebounding stats often are rather obvious, whether pulled off the offensive glass or defensive boards. The big challenge comes when there is a flurry of shots and offensive rebounds at one basket. Sometimes maybe four or five shots, each with an offensive rebound, and with multiple players involved. That is probably the biggest stat-keeping headache. Remembering backwards can also help in those situations, too.
Trying to track individual defensive deflections is another difficult stat, especially when a ball is batted or tipped around inside the lane with multiple players around. A ball is tipped with multiple arms and hands flying about, but who touched the ball?
Keeping tabs of shots taken is the busiest work, including if an attempt is a three-pointer. Watching the position of players’ feet on those three-pointers helps a lot, along with the position of a referee’s arm. If a ref’s arm is raised, it’s three-point shot.
When it comes to tabulating particular hoop stats, the process is constant, with never, ever having he luxury of moving eyes away from the action. Timeouts, halftimes and the minute or so between quarters are much-welcomed breaks from the challenge.