As of today, the Universidad Católica de Murcia has a Doctor in Sports Science in the NBA, the best basketball league in the world. His name is Adam Petway, performance director of the Washington Wizards, current leader of the Eastern Conference, who, after three years of hard work, has successfully defended his doctoral thesis, the last step to achieve the highest possible academic rank.  

His research, entitled “Neuromuscular fluctuations and match-play demands of the collegiate basketball competitive season”, aims to examine changes in neuromuscular performance during the season and evaluate the effects of different neuromuscular potentiation strategies during training as well as their effect on games. Among other findings, Petway has determined that neuromuscular performance is sensitive to the time of year and the intensity of competitions a player has and that players with greater recovery in reactive strength index the day before the competition reached higher top speeds relative to their normative values the following day. 

These findings are extremely useful when it comes to understanding the demands of games in elite basketball, the programming of training sessions and the improvement of reactive strength qualities to optimise neuromuscular physical preparation. 

The directors of the thesis were Pedro Emilio Alcaraz and Tomás T. Freitas, from UCAM, and Julio Calleja, from the University of the Basque Country. Adam Petway started his thesis when he was still working as a physical trainer in the Philadelphia 76ers. Since then, including his move to the Wizards as performance director, he has published three international articles (JCR) with an extremely high applicability rate for the control of training load and competition in professional basketball.  

Three leading researchers participated in the thesis tribunal: Alejandro Vaquera, professor at the University of León and coordinator of FIBA Referees Global; Daniele Conte, professor at the Lithuanian Sports University and coordinator of MSC International Basketball Coaching and Management; and Francesco Cuzzolin, professor at the Università degli Studi di Udine and former performance director of the Italian National Basketball Team. 

Adam Petway: "I am very grateful to UCAM"

The Wizards' Performance Director wanted to express his gratitude to all those who have accompanied him throughout the challenge of completing this doctoral thesis, especially to his directors "Pedro Emilio Alcaraz, who trusted a young professional from the United States and helped me become the professional I am today; Julio Calleja, for sharing all his knowledge and teaching me to express new ideas; and Tomás T.Freitas, for helping me whenever I needed him and for sharing his experience with me, which was key in my learning". 

He also wanted to highlight the importance of the support received by the Universidad Católica de Murcia: "I am very grateful to UCAM for allowing me to pursue my passion and for giving me the opportunity to do research into the sport I love for these last three years".