Sequential Behavior Analysis in Sport

Sequential behavior analysis treats a sporting performance not as a bag of independent events but as an ordered stream in which what happens next depends on what just happened. Drawing on Roger Bakeman and John Gottman's authoritative 1997 text Observing Interaction: An Introduction to Sequential Analysis, the method codes play into a time-ordered sequence of mutually exclusive events, builds a transition matrix counting how often each event is followed by each other event at a given lag, and converts these counts into conditional transition probabilities. Crucially, it tests those probabilities against what would be expected by chance, so that genuinely recurrent patterns of play — the move that reliably leads to a shot, the defensive action that triggers a turnover — can be distinguished from coincidence. Hughes and Bartlett's performance-indicator framework supplies the bridge from these tested sequences to actionable tactical knowledge.