Hey guys, I am taking the beginning steps of what I hope to be a journey in sports analytics, specifically college basketball. The way my graduation and internship timelines work gives me what I think to be about a year starting from today to really build a decent portfolio of models and gain some new skills before pursuing a GA position. I know this is a broad question so I am okay with broad answers.
Right now I would say my skills are mostly in Excel, which I know is not enough. I also can work my way around visualization tools like Tableau and PowerBI, although I am not sure how relevant those are for sports analyst. I have heard people mention SQL and R, although I am also not sure how relevant those are. Most of my work has centered around finding historical trends and patterns from a birds-eye view, but I would like to develop something resembling a predictive model for players. Do you guys have any thoughts or words of advice? I would call myself pretty technologically inclined so I am not too worried about having to learn new softwares.