Spears School of Business

Oklahoma State University graduate student Adrienne Huntley, a standout in the Spears School of Business master’s in business analytics and data science (MS BAnDS) program, earned a second-place finish at the prestigious 2025 National Collegiate Sports Analytics Championships (NCSAC) held Feb. 18-19 at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.

 

"I was incredibly honored to represent Oklahoma State at the National Collegiate Sports Analytics Championship,” said Huntley. “Competing against top students from across the country was an amazing experience, and I loved the challenge of applying analytics to real-world sports data. I'm thankful for the opportunity to compete and network with industry professionals. I'd also like to thank the MS BAnDS community for their support, including our faculty, professors, my mentor and peers."

 

Put on by Baylor University and the NHL’s Nashville Predators, this year’s NCSAC pitted students in a bracket-style format in which students analyzed social media data from Zoomph and the PWHL to create five minutes of insights to present to judges in order to demonstrate their analytic, visualization and communication skills.

 

“I am incredibly proud of all the students participating in the sports analytics competition,” said Dr. Miriam McGaugh, faculty advisor for the MS BAnDS program. “Their dedication to applying data-driven insights to real-world challenges exemplifies both their analytical expertise and passion for shaping the future of sports. Adrienne did exceptionally well for her first national competition.”

 

This is just the latest honor coming from OSU’s MS BAnDS program, which is led by Dr. Goutam Chakraborty. Earlier this month, Spears Business teams placed first and second at the University of South Carolina’s Big Data Health Science Student Case Competition. In the fall, OSU claimed a national championship at Purdue University’s Data 4 Good Case Competition, and OSU students won two Best Presentation awards at the 2024 MidWest SAS Users Group Conference.

 

Long considered one of the nation’s premier programs, OSU’s MS BAnDS program earned the No. 2 spot in Fortune.com’s Best Master’s in Data Science for 2025 rankings. The program climbed 11 spots since last year to achieve its best ranking ever, just behind top-ranked Harvard University. Click here to learn more about OSU’s MS BAnDS program.