Athletic 40 under 40 in basketball
Neel Ganta
Title: Graduate assistant, Illinois | Age: 22
Ganta was born and raised in Manhattan, Kan., as the son of Indian immigrants who work in the sciences at Kansas State. When he was young he played basketball with Tyler Underwood, whose father, Brad, was an assistant coach at the time with the Wildcats. Ganta attended K-State as a financial analysis and investment management major, but his passion for basketball was so great that he turned down a lucrative job offer from JPMorgan Chase to pursue a career in basketball analytics. In the summer of 2019, right before starting an internship with the Boston Celtics, Ganta traveled to Champaign, Ill., and showed Underwood, now the Illini’s head coach, an analytics project explaining how Underwood’s up-tempo, pressing system was putting his teams at a disadvantage because they fouled too much. As a result, Underwood implemented a more deliberate style, which helped Illinois go from being ranked 338th in the country in defensive free-throw rate to 20th last season and tie for third in the Big Ten. Since Underwood hired Ganta this summer, he has designed a web app that players and coaches can use to access the playbook, analytics tables, scouting reports and video, among other goodies. Underwood may be right when he says Ganta is too smart to be a basketball coach, but if he wants to stay in the business, he’ll have no problem finding work.
Neel Ganta
Title: Graduate assistant, Illinois | Age: 22
Ganta was born and raised in Manhattan, Kan., as the son of Indian immigrants who work in the sciences at Kansas State. When he was young he played basketball with Tyler Underwood, whose father, Brad, was an assistant coach at the time with the Wildcats. Ganta attended K-State as a financial analysis and investment management major, but his passion for basketball was so great that he turned down a lucrative job offer from JPMorgan Chase to pursue a career in basketball analytics. In the summer of 2019, right before starting an internship with the Boston Celtics, Ganta traveled to Champaign, Ill., and showed Underwood, now the Illini’s head coach, an analytics project explaining how Underwood’s up-tempo, pressing system was putting his teams at a disadvantage because they fouled too much. As a result, Underwood implemented a more deliberate style, which helped Illinois go from being ranked 338th in the country in defensive free-throw rate to 20th last season and tie for third in the Big Ten. Since Underwood hired Ganta this summer, he has designed a web app that players and coaches can use to access the playbook, analytics tables, scouting reports and video, among other goodies. Underwood may be right when he says Ganta is too smart to be a basketball coach, but if he wants to stay in the business, he’ll have no problem finding work.
