Mike Wilson, Knoxville News SentinelMon, November 24, 2025 at 10:00 AM UTC·6 min readScott Daughtry found a name.
The Tennessee basketball director of strategy took it to assistant coach Gregg Polinsky, who was headed on the summer circuit recruiting.
“He said, 'He really rates out well on my analytical model,' ” Polinsky recalled.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementPolinsky had his plan for the Kansas City Midwest Basketball Showcase in June with teams and players to watch. The name Daughtry brought was new — it wasn’t a player many schools were recruiting but his data indicated should be sought after as a high-major prospect.
Polinsky watched the recruit and was impressed, Daughtry's tip proving correct as the analytics side blended with the reality on the Vols' hunt for players in the summer.
“We are just trying to be as much like an NBA front office as we can in the new world of college athletics front offices,” Daughtry said.
Daughtry is Tennessee’s backroom brainiac — part mathematician, part secret weapon. He used his obsession with data to create a model that seeks to project players’ production and it is part of how Tennessee builds a roster each offseason.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHow Scott Daughtry built an analytics model for Tennessee basketball
Daughtry’s title is vague as the director of strategy.
It was created for him in June 2025 because of his strengths — and value. It has a wide range of responsibilities. His statistical model is in the middle of what he does.
“I played basketball in high school and I ran on the track team,” Daughtry said. “There was a little bit of athleticism in me, but I will tell you what — when I was 16, I did not think I would be coding out machine-learning models.”
Daughtry, 24, built a model using his background in studying business analytics at UT and multiple internships with NBA teams.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe scrapes the internet for data on players, funneling more than 100 data points from the box score to opponent quality to team success into his algorithm. It produces a wins above replacement player (WARP) metric, a version of the longstanding baseball WAR. It assesses production value and helps with allocating potential revenue sharing figures.
Tennessee uses that information to evaluate a player's fit on the roster with Daughtry working in tandem with director of player personnel and recruiting coordinator Lucas Campbell to aid coach Rick Barnes and the staff.
If it sounds like “Moneyball” and the early 2000s Oakland Athletics, that’s because there’s correlation. But it’s more linked to how the NBA has viewed players and roster-building for years.
Daughtry, who started at UT as a manager in 2021, interned with the Indiana Pacers in 2023, which shaped his approach and gave him insight into the NBA way of predicting player production and value. He has gotten perspective from front office personnel with the New York Knicks and Miami Heat, setting the baseline for the Tennessee-focused work Daughtry does.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“I am more passionate about helping Tennessee basketball than anything else,” Daughtry said.
How the model has grown from portal focus to building Tennessee's roster
Daughtry started his model with a core belief based in NBA principles.
In the NBA, draft picks carry the greatest potential for value and are like gold to front offices.
“The gold in college basketball is mid-major players,” Daughtry said. "If you can find a Chaz Lanier or Dalton Knecht, you can get a whole lot of production.”
It’s not sustainable for an NBA team to build a roster through only free agency. Likewise, a college roster has to be built using all possible avenues: high-major transfers, mid-major transfers and high school recruiting.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementDaughtry’s work began with predicting mid-major transfers jumping to the high-major level, which remains a core component of his model. It has become more accurate with more data and refining the algorithm. He has three UT students who help him with the data and the continued filtering.
The model updates daily throughout the season, essentially giving the Vols a board when the transfer portal opens and players enter. Instead of the staff having thousands of players to sift through, they can start with the players that project best and fit the best into what Tennessee desires.
“It is trying to be on the right side of preparation,” Campbell said. “I think we have a leg up.”
UT had employed the analytical information into its portal work for three years. Daughtry has expanded it into high school recruiting, which UT used for the first time in the 2025 class. He’s working on an international model next.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt has a high level of certainty in projecting high-major transfers, while mid-major transfers are the second-best projection. It accounts for possible deviation for high schoolers, but seeks to find players who might not be highly rated but project impact that exceeds rankings.
“The whole idea is there are some kids out there like Zakai Zeigler or Chaz Lanier or Dalton Knecht — how do we find those kids now?” Daughtry said.
It's not all 'Moneyball' for Tennessee, which blends scouting with data
Polinsky looked for the marriage of three components in his two decades in the NBA.
The best choices are made when what you see a player do, what you hear about the player and what the analytics declare marry into one picture.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“We are — on a college level — following that same platform,” Polinsky said.
Daughtry’s model is an elite resource for the Vols, serving as a confirmation of what coaches already see or pointing toward a player to examine more. It isn’t the final decision-maker but a tool.
“It helps us when we may not know why, but we like this kid,” Campbell said. "The model is like, ‘Well, I can tell you why. These are the numbers why.’ ”
The coaches have access to a website with all the data on players. Daughtry can produce reports to hand to coaches. They can add scouting and character information, rounding out the total picture to mesh the analytics with intel.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe greatest value in Daughtry’s model is that it is an independent, objective voice.
“It allows us to see things because as assistants sometimes you get really emotional,” Vols associate head coach Justin Gainey said. “What he brings to the table is that analytical view for you to remove the emotion and see here are the numbers and what they numbers are saying.”
Sometimes, Daughtry’s model even churns numbers that point to a name. It might not be a name that is widely known, but it pops from the algorithm.
That happened this summer — and the player landed at a high-major school exactly as Daughtry projected.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementMike Wilson covers University of Tennessee athletics. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on X @ByMikeWilson. If you enjoy Mike’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that will allow you access to all of it
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: How Scott Daughtry influences Tennessee basketball roster-building
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