spatial patters

i've been discussing with some non-frisbee friends about ways to describe players movements on the field of play. i'm especially thinking aobut games which have continuous play, like soccer, or at least a continuous possession like basketball or maybe water polo. Geographers use metrics like nearest-neighbors or other tools to determine how "clustered" a set of observations are. i've thought about using a similar technique to look at how players move to try and categorize different styles of play. i haven't come up with a real good technique yet, but maybe by describing my idea someone else will have something to contribute.

basketball is an easy example to describe because there are only 5 players. i'm sure one can imagine the difference in player spacing between a team running a classic phil jackson (or tex winter) triangle offense that is more equal opportunity and relies on good spacing between the players, versus a classic pick-and-roll offense where two players work in harmony and the others spread themselves out, versus a classic shaq offense (i.e. lakers pre-phil), where movement is predicated on dumping the ball into the big fella and everyone standing around. the spatial setup of these offenses would likely be very different and over the course of a possession that spatial relationship would change in a unique way. there is probably a way to quantify both the spatial value (clusteredness) and how that value changes. then, a team's style could be defined by this metric and a comparison of styles could also be made (i.e. that team plays a lot like the spurs) and tactics could be developed to create certain values.

this could also be the case for ultimate. no-dumps, one-dump, two-dumps, spread, horizontal stack, vertical stack would all likely have different values, and we could discuss a team's style by this value. we would all guess that how a huck-n-hope offense moves is very different from how a conservative offense moves, even if their initial setup is similar. strategies to disrupt a team's offense could be based on this metric somehow.

right now, it's all just some very unrefined idea in my mind, but i bet someone real clever with a ton of video footage, computer programming skills and a love for frisbee details (like corey) could figure this out in a snap.