Meet Michigan basketball's analytics guru who has team breaking the metrics

Did you hear the one about the computer scientist from Duke who ends up being one of the unsung critical assets to perhaps the best Michigan basketball team of all time?

It may sound like the beginning of a joke, but there's no punchline – the joke is on anybody who doesn't understand just what the Wolverines are doing.

Jacob Kohn is little known outside the Wolverines' most inner circle, but his fingerprints are on just about everything U-M prides itself on. In short, he's one of the team's most vital keys to a historic start. And it's all from a simple mission, in Kohn's own words: "Put numbers in different areas of the program to try and help us get better at whatever that is."

One dominating start

The No. 1 Wolverines (13-0, 3-0 Big Ten) are off to their best start since 2018-19 and already setting records.

With 18 regular-season games to go, Michigan has six 40-point wins – the most by any Big Ten team in a single season in the history of the conference. Michigan has won nine of its past 10 games by 25 points or more, the lone exception an 18-point drubbing of Maryland on the road. Entering 2026, Michigan ranked No. 1 in both offensive and defensive two-point field goal percentage, per KenPom – a feat never achieved dating back to the 1996-97 season. Meanwhile, on EvanMiya, an analytics-based site, U-M has the highest efficiency rating of any team dating back to the start of the 2009-10 season.

Coach Dusty May's Wolverines aren't just beating teams – they're destroying them.

In that span, Michigan has beaten the spread by an average of nearly 20 points. Teams simply don't dominate Vegas, much less opponents, in this way. The primary reason Michigan has been able to do so, on a macro level, is the players brought in to complement one another, living up to a team ethos that sells unselfishness as its greatest attribute.

But on a micro level? It's because no stone is unturned in a single game. That's where Kohn, the team's new director of basketball analytics, has become a sort of wild card for the most overwhelming team in America.

"He brings a number of things," May said. "Jacob is very, very talented in his field. ... We have a good understanding of what our strengths and weaknesses are, so we just try to live in the strengths and develop our weaknesses."

'I gotta see that one'

Prior to every game, just after the team meeting one hour before tipoff, Kohn goes to the court to set up a computer and his tablet. On the computer, Kohn makes sure to "mark" all the offensive and defensive trips down court, where the key moment of the possession took place for a quick analysis by coaches – be it in-game or afterward.

After each timeout, he gets the updated stat sheet. What's he looking for? Primarily, "turnovers and fouls," he said.

But the real action comes on his tablet, where Kohn is in charge of identifying calls to challenge for replay review.

"Yeah, it's stressful," he laughed. "Honestly, the worst part is waiting."

On Dec. 21, Michigan hosted La Salle and put Kohn to work late in the first half. An out of bounds call underneath the La Salle basket went against U-M, and instantly the Wolverines started whipping their fingers in the air, to signal a review – and all eyes on the bench turned to Kohn.

Buying him another second of review time – U-M had to decide to challenge before the ball was inbounded – the Wolverines quickly pulled a player from the bench to sub into the game.

Managers watch over his shoulder as they all sift through the angles, hoping to find an angle that shows the ball went off the opponent. It's pretty bang-bang. During the review, assistant coach Justin Joyner asks him "What's your record?" Kohn knew: 3-2. The previous one he'd gotten wrong.

It was a close call, but Kohn decided it was time to go for it.

"You gotta end the losing streak," U-M hoops GM Kyle Church quipped.

Instead, he dropped to 3-3 – perhaps the only average thing about this Wolverines season.

The call stood in large part because the initial call went to La Salle – there simply wasn't "inconclusive" video evidence to overturn it, though it did appear to go out off La Salle from at least one angle.

But working the video screen is far from Kohn's only job. There was the time May was frustrated over what he felt were inconsistent calls. One in particular, a moving screen call on the Wolverines, sent him racing over to Kohn.

"That screen down there wasn’t even close to being an illegal screen, was it?" May asked.

"No, the defender grabbed him and turned him around," Kohn replied, flipping the tablet toward May so he could quickly see a replay before the coach shook his head and began to pace the sideline. At another point, May went back to Kohn after Elliot Cadeau was called for a charge.

"I gotta see that one, I gotta see that one," May repeated – Kohn had already cued up the replay.

There are times Kohn takes matters into his own hands, too. Against LaSalle, Michigan took the ball out of bounds with 53 seconds left in the first half. Kohn reminded May he still had his use-it-or-lose-it timeout of the half.

May then instructed the Wolverines to try and go 2-for-1 with the possession; moments later, Roddy Gayle Jr. whipped a crosscourt pass to L.J. Cason who banged home a 3-pointer.

May instantly called timeout.

Turning numbers into usable information

Kohn doesn't work solely on game days – not hardly.

Ahead of every game Michigan plays, there's one assistant coach who's on "scout" – the point person for watching film on the opponent, identifying what it likes to do and finding areas U-M can exploit.

Although Kohn says he's technically not on "every" scout, he is. Kohn works three games ahead to create a report for coaches – 15-20 pages at a time. At that point, he makes notes and runs it by the coaches who've seen the film.

Then, they condense it even further to give it to the players in as simple of context as possible.

Sometimes it's as straightforward as emphasizing avoiding a certain player getting a catch-and-shoot 3 because he's a lower-percentage shooter off the bounce. Other times it can be more nuanced – but there's always a goal in mind.

'He's just so smart'

Kohn got his start in 2020 as an intern at Big League Advantage – an investment firm that, primarily, identifies up-and-coming athletes and then offers up-front capital in exchange for 1% of said athlete's professional earnings.

But it also consults with basketball teams, and with Duke signing on as the firm's first hoops client, Kohn – a recent Duke alumnus – was a natural fit to serve as a liason. He was "learning on the job," he admits, but eventually, he was working indirectly for Mike Krzyzewski, using analytics to recommend transfer portal additions and high school recruits.

Coach K was not a "big analytics" guy, according to Kohn. But the tenets of his basketball mind often "will align with the analytics," bringing success.

May, on the other hand ...

BLA began working with U-M last season after May got a recommendation from Alabama (led by former Romulus coach Nate Oats).

Kohn was a consultant last year, coming to Ann Arbor on three occasions during May's first season. The Wolverines, outside of a turnover problem, proved highly efficient. Although U-M only had a one-year contract with the firm, May knew he wanted to bring someone in full-time.

"Dusty just called me last summer and was like, 'I want you to come work for me'," Kohn said. "It was really cool, like, OK, I've done a good job at this, so that was awesome, then it's like, I have to make a major life decision."

Kohn arrived in Ann Arbor in early September and quickly began ingratiating himself with the staff. He's in the coaches meetings and on the text-message threads as he analyzes not just opponents, but U-M's own practices for potential improvements.

It's something that even went into identifying which players to target this offseason.

“Analytics played a role, eye test played a role and our gut played a role. All of that plays a role,” May said last month. “We definitely looked at the numbers and at the data. Sometimes you do it just to confirm your own thoughts. We have a full-time analytics guy on staff. It’s been very, very valuable just to either confirm or deny what we saw on film.”

It's tough to argue with the success: U-M has the second-highest adjusted efficiency margin, per KenPom, since 1997.

It's a give-and-take between Kohn and the rest of the staff: He provides what the numbers are telling him, and the coaches analyze how to use that information and weigh whether they're going to direct players into specific thought processes, or simply let them ball.

"He really helps us inform our decision making both offensively and defensively," Joyner said. "Really in the shot profile. The best thing he does is really reaffirm our thought process in what makes us the best team, what gives the best chance of winning from a mathematics standpoint.

"We're lucky to have him, because he's just so smart."

'We can be ... better than we have been'

Kohn's fingerprints are on everything in the program, from identifying high school players on the EYBL circuit to keeping an eye on the transfer portal to, perhaps most importantly, self-scouting.

Kohn was the one who, coming out of U-M's dominant run at the Players Era Festival in November, suggested the Wolverines needed to improve on transition defense. In the next game, May's group didn't give up a single fastbreak point.

On the whole, Michigan is an analytics wagon.

The Wolverines are the nation's No. 1 team in both 2-point defense (38.72%) and offense (65.1%). As a result, their effective field goal defense is No. 1 (40.7%) and offense is No. 2 (61.8). Michigan is tops in Big Ten play in rim protection (with a 20.5% block rate) and No. 1 in assist rate on both sides of the ball (73% on offense and 35.2% on defense). They've done all of this despite playing the 16th-hardest schedule in America.

"The excitement level is really high," Kohn said. "I mean, I think we can be really, really good – better than we have been."

How is that possible? Well for instance, U-M isn't inside the top 50 in offensive rebound rate (No. 51 36.0%) and still isn't forcing as many turnovers as it wants - just 17% of possessions, No. 195 in NCAA Division I. Clearly, that's being quite picky.

Virtually ever ranking and analytics site – with the exception of the Associated Press media poll, which has U-M No. 2 – sees the Wolverines as far and away the nation's top team. KenPom sees Michigan as a 90% or more favorite in its next seven games – which would set the Wolverines up at 20-0 going into their matchup with Michigan State on Jan. 30.

Michigan can't rest on its imaginary data laurels, though. The month of March is littered with teams that dominated the winter only to go dry in the spring thaw. However, those squads didn't have a Yaxel Lendeborg – the No. 1 player in in BPR (measuring the points per 100 possessions a player has vs. expectation), per Evan Miya, and the second-best overall since 2009 (behind only Purdue's Zach Edey during the Boilermakers' run to the 2024 Final Four).

Kohn and the Wolverines are trying to stay on the cutting edge: Miya posted on social media earlier this year that U-M was the first program to sign up for his platform's front-office suite.

In basketball and in life, it's hard to trust everything one hears. But U-M's start, however, could best be summarized with some wise words from Yo Gotti dating back to 2009 as well: Women lie, men lie, numbers don't lie.

Just ask Kohn.

Tony Garcia is the Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Michigan basketball analytics guru Jacob Kohn has Wolverines breaking records