Saturday Ball is a pickup basketball stat tracker. It's a web app for pickup basketball groups and leagues to record game data and view stats, leaderboards, and player profiles. The system computes advanced stats from the data you enter — going well beyond basic points, rebounds, and assists.

Pickup groups are for casual, unstructured play. There are no fixed teams — players show up, you build teams on the fly, and the app tracks leaderboards and individual stats over time. Players can be activated or deactivated each session.

Leagues are for structured, team-based competition. You define teams, manage rosters, and the app tracks standings, win/loss records, and both player and team stats across a season.

You choose which type to create when you start a new group, and this cannot be changed later.

Click Create a Group on the home page or from your account menu. You'll choose a name, select pickup or league, and configure a few defaults like your stats method (play-by-play or box score). Once created, you can invite players and start adding games right away.

Your group is public by default. This means that anyone can view your group's data, including game data, stats, leaderboards, and player profiles.

Private groups are not possible at this time. But will be possible in the future.

No. The group type (pickup or league) is set at creation and cannot be changed. If you need a different type, you'll need to create a new group.

Go to your group's Settings page and open the Group members tab to invite people by email and set their permissions. For a roster-wide view of who is linked or invited (and bulk invites), use the Player accounts tab. Invited players receive a link to join your group. On the Player accounts tab, you can Cancel invite next to a pending invite to invalidate the link if you sent it by mistake or to the wrong address.

Play-by-play lets you record individual events (field goals, rebounds, assists, turnovers, etc.) as they happen or after the fact. This unlocks advanced stats like True Passing %, Defensive Rating, and per-100 possession metrics.

Box score mode is simpler — you upload a stat line per game (points, rebounds, assists, etc.) without tracking individual plays. It's faster to enter but produces only basic stats.

Your stats method is chosen when creating the group and cannot be changed later.

No. The stats method (play-by-play or box score) is fixed at group creation. Plan accordingly when setting up your group.

You can enter plays on your phone during the game in real time, or track on paper and enter everything after. If you're using play-by-play mode, create the game first, then use the Add Plays screen to log each event. Box score groups can upload a stat sheet for each game.

Yes. If your group uses box score mode, you can upload a CSV file for each game directly from the game page. This is useful if your group already tracks stats in a spreadsheet.

If you start from our blank box score template (Google Sheets), use File → Make a copy so your group works from its own copy instead of editing the shared master. Fill it in, then download or export as CSV to upload on the game page.

You can link a YouTube video to a game and sync individual plays to timestamps in the video. This lets you review and highlight specific moments — like a great pass or defensive stop — directly from a player's profile or the game page.

Per-100 stats normalize each player's numbers to 100 possessions, which makes it fair to compare players with different playing time. Advanced metrics include things like True Shooting %, True Passing %, and Defensive Rating — these go beyond counting stats and give a more complete picture of how each player contributes. Per-100 and advanced stats are only available for groups using play-by-play mode and require a minimum number of plays to be meaningful (configurable in group settings).

In pickup groups, each game's MVP is the player on the winning team with the highest PIE (Player Impact Estimate) for that game. PIE measures each player's share of the game's overall positive impact from the box score (points, shooting, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turnovers, and fouls). It is not simply the leading scorer.

In pickup groups only, organizers can run RSVP polls for a specific run: set the date, time, and place (plus optional notes), choose who to invite from the group roster, and send email invitations. Invited members get a personal link to respond in or out without signing in.

Open your group's Games page and use RSVP polls to create a poll, send or resend invites, and see who is in, out, or has not answered yet. You can set when RSVPs close and cancel a poll if plans change (canceling notifies people who were already invited). RSVP polls are not available for leagues.

When someone RSVPs, they can optionally leave a short note with their in or out response. Group admins and contributors see those notes on the poll's invited roster; other members do not.

Seasons let you organize games into distinct time periods (e.g., Spring 2025, Fall 2025). Stats, standings, and leaderboards can be filtered by season so you can track how things change over time. For leagues, each season tracks standings, win/loss records, and streaks. For pickup groups, seasons help organize leaderboards and records over different periods.

Go to your group's Settings page and navigate to the Seasons tab. From there you can create a new season with a name and start date.

League standings only count published games. Unpublished games are treated as drafts, so their results do not change the standings until you publish them. When editing a game, set Publish Game? to Yes once the score and stats are final. If your league restricts publishing to group admins, an admin must publish the game for it to affect standings.

Yes. When your Saturday Ball account is linked to a roster player who is assigned to a team in that league, the Schedule page (including upcoming and past game lists) shows Show My Team and Show All Games next to the season selector. Choose Show My Team to list only games your team plays in; choose Show All Games to return to the full schedule for the season. Your commissioner links members to roster players from Settings (the Group members or Player accounts tabs) when sending or managing invitations.

Go to the Players section of your group to add new players by name. You can also deactivate players you no longer need rather than deleting them, which preserves their historical stats.

Deactivating a player hides them from active rosters and team-building screens so they don't clutter things up for players who no longer participate. Their past stats and game logs are fully preserved and still appear in historical leaderboards and records.

Each player has a profile page showing their total and per-100 stats, a full game log, and any video highlights linked to their plays. Profiles are a great way to review a player's contributions over time and analyze their style of play. If your Saturday Ball account is linked to a roster player in the group (your commissioner sets this when you join), you can open your profile and use Edit Player to update details like your name, photo, height, and position. Active status and current team (in leagues) can only be changed by someone with roster permissions for the group.

The AI team generator uses player stats from your group to suggest balanced teams for a game. Select the players who are present, and the generator will propose team splits designed to make the games competitive. You can find it under the Games section of your group.

Game data, stats, leaderboards, and player profiles may be publicly accessible by default. If you have privacy concerns about your group's data, please contact us at customer-support@saturdayball.com.

We collect the information you provide when creating an account and entering game data. We also use Google Analytics to understand how the app is used. For full details, see our Privacy Policy.

To request account or group deletion, contact us at customer-support@saturdayball.com and we'll take care of it.