Coaches have a multifunctional key role in high performance team sports. One of the duties of the coach, in some sports, is the efficient use of team timeouts. Scientific literature on sports, however, has only paid limited attention to the use of Team time-outs (TTOs), this is especially the case in handball. This is somewhat surprising since TTO can be used as a strategic intervention in dynamic play on the field. With this master's thesis, we examine why and in what minutes of the game coaches use team time out in handball and the effectiveness of those TTOs, especially for winning and losing teams.
The work is based on the statistical analysis of all TTOs during the world championship in Egypt held in January 2021. The method was used to establish hypotheses as to why coaches use time outs and in what minutes, and what happens with the difference in results. The findings suggest that there are several reasons why coaches use time out in handball, the most important being to stop the negative flow in the game. Other reasons are where to emphasize or change the strategy of the game, rest the players, slow down the game or try to secure a goal.
In the 91 matches analyzed at the World Handball Championship in Egypt, there were a total of 357 time outs, which is 56.38% of the possible number, the winning teams took 150 time outs, or 54.94%, and the losing teams took 207, i.e. . 75.82% outages. Additionally, the average time out for a winning and losing team is two time outs per game. Also, both the winning and the losing team knew how to take advantage of all possible time outs, as well as not to ask for a time out. Thus, on average, losing teams required more time, which was expected, to break the negative result streak
Statistical findings show support for coaches' criteria when using TTOs. The results further showed that TTOs are effective in stopping the negative flow in the game, but also show that the winning teams achieve a better score difference after the TTOs.
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