CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — The UNC men's basketball team is ranked No. 4 in the country, according to the latest Associated Press Top-25 poll. They're having a huge bounce-back season, and head coach Hubert Davis' squad is playing with an ease and chemistry we didn't quite see last year.

The transfers he's brought in, such as Cormac Ryan and Harrison Ingram, have been instrumental, but one part of the team's success this year hasn't seen a single minute of action on the court. 

UNC junior Conor Kerr is the founder of SAIL, the Sports Analysis Intelligence Laboratory, a program and course students can enroll in to study sports analytics. The goal is to help UNC coaches and athletes not only improve performance, but find a competitive edge over their opponents.

Kerr's work with the UNC men's basketball team this year appears to be bearing fruit. Davis' squad is 14-3 on the year. They're 6-0 in ACC play, perfect both in road games and at home at the Dean E. Smith Center. Add in an eight-game win streak, and things are looking pretty good for the Tar Heels. 

"SAIL is a group of Ph.D. students, faculty and undergraduates, just like any other laboratory, that not only focuses on independent research, but on giving back to the university," Kerr said. 

While the SAIL program supplies students to help with all UNC sports, Kerr's focus as been men's and women's basketball since the day he stepped on campus. It was a major factor in his decision to attend UNC-Chapel Hill, when he had the opportunity to attend the University of Georgia and Emory University.

Since working with the men's program, he's had consistent contact and help from the team's head athletic trainer Doug Halverson. 

"As part of the medical staff, we're always collecting data to prevent injury," Halverson said. "Kinexon, and movement analysis, GPS analysis, has become one of the more popular metrics for us to use, manage and look through. So each practice, our players are wearing chips in their shorts, so we can monitor and manage what they're doing on the court."

"The science is the numbers and the objective measurements we're collecting, but then we have to figure out how that translates to the court and whether or not we can manipulate those things to help us be more successful, help us to be healthier," he said.

From there, Kerr enters the equation, using his love for mathematics and statistics.

Growing up, Kerr had a passion to study the ocean. But after realizing he didn't quite have the ability to play college basketball, he decided to contribute in another way.

"I did play basketball in middle school for two years and I scored two points," Kerr said.  "I played center, because believe it or not, I've been this tall since fifth grade. Then everybody grew and I couldn't dribble and things didn't work out so well."

Kerr takes data that Halverson gathers and uses programs he writes and graphs he creates to compare player performance to past and future performances, in the hopes of bettering players' performances in practice and games.

"The problem we're trying to solve with this graph is how do we get a player to return to a court. He's been injured, he's been cleared to come back, and then how do you ease them back into practice and games," he said. "So here, these are different load metrics, which are kind of telling you how hard is he working for every practice, and so the blue is him, and the red would be his teammates, and so we want to know how is he practicing relative to his teammates, and then how do we increase that load so that he matches his teammates, but at the right time."

Kerr says he loves working with sports because of the science and riddles that come with athletics. 

"Sports is a pretty controlled environment, and you have coaches and staff who are constantly asking questions," he said. "So there's just kind of a really rich kind of playing field, to do statistics and analysis on. That's how I've always approached it, just a really big space where I can answer some questions."

Kerr's goal is to help UNC win a national championship. If he can do that, he'll feel he's left his mark on the university. But to him, there's a larger opportunity that SAIL aids in. 

"There's a common term at UNC — it's called leave your heel print," he said. "So I'd like to leave my heel print on not just the men's basketball program, but also the statistics community at UNC, and hopefully the larger academic and athletics community."

Over 50 UNC students applied to take part in the SAIL program last year, and only five were selected. The students work not only with basketball as Kerr does, but work with teams like tennis, swimming and diving, and are even starting to analyze dance teams at UNC. 

If you or someone you know is interested in joining the SAIL program as a student at UNC, you can email Mario Giacomazzo or Kerr.