Development of sport-specific performance parameters during international pre-matches among adolescent basketball players

Abstract Background Knowledge of physical performances in the light of match statistics could help to discover what skills make a basketball player successful. The present study aimed to investigate how age and gender affected the Game Related Performance variables (GRP) and find out the connections between GRP) data and game-related statistics (GRS). Method Seventeen U19, fifteen U16 boy, and thirteen U16 girl players from Hungarian national teams participated in this study. Players’ GRP data and GRS were collected from fifteen international pre-matches during the preparation training camps in 2023. GRP data were monitored with WIMU PRO™, RealTrack Systems SL, which included a Garmin band that monitors heart rate. The GRS were selected from the official box scores of International Basketball Federation. Depending on homogeneity and normality Mann-Whitney U Test, Welch T-Test, and independent-sample T-Test were used to analyse differences between different age groups and genders. The Pearson correlation was used to examine the relationship between the GRS and GRP. Result There was a significant difference in max-speed (p = 0.024), playing load/min (p = 0.008), average HR, (p = 0.009), jump/min (p = 0.001), and explosive distance/min (p = 0.001) between U16 girls and boys. The average speed (p = 0.015), maximal acceleration (p = 0.037), High Intensity acceleration/min (p = 0.001), and high-intensity Deceleration/min (p = 0.002) were significantly different between U19 and U16 boys. A weak and medium relationship between the GRS and the GRP measured were found. We concluded that AVGSpeed, MaxSpeed, ExplDis/min, HIAcc/min, and HIDec/min are discriminative physical parameters and the total distance, the number of jumps, and the pulse values are not important parameters in terms of the outcome of the match. The main difference between sexes among adolescent players is the covered distance of higher intensity running. Among male basketball players, the number of high-intensity accelerations and decelerations were the main differences between different age groups. Conclusion According to our findings, experts might verify their opinion on the importance of individual physical skills that have a decisive impact on the players' effectiveness.