Hudson Jacobs is a basketball lifer.

Not just in the sense of working in basketball his entire career, like most who earn that moniker. Jacobs has very literally been around basketball since the first day of his life.

"I grew up a coach's son," Jacobs told GamecockScoop. "On the way home from the hospital, he stopped by the gym. He took me in and told me, 'Get used to this feeling. It's going to be a big part of your life.' And he was not lying."

He started his life on a basketball court, and has stayed there.

Under his official title, Jacobs is South Carolina's Director of Women's Basketball Video Services. The position has changed a few times through his 14 years on Dawn Staley's staff, but the overall tenor of his job has not.

If anything video related can help South Carolina women's basketball win, it falls under his jurisdiction.

"Not the fun stuff you see that Jhalen does that goes on the internet," Jacobs joked, referencing South Carolina's creative media producer, Jhalen Wingate. "It's the stuff that we're watching with the players and with the coaches. The scout films on the other teams, film on ourselves, our practices, all that stuff. We break it down in various ways, so I'll adjust that approach based on which coach might happen to be doing what."

Sure enough, Jacobs grew up around basketball. His dad still coached the girls' team, and wanted some help. Someone who knew the game, knew his players, and could help both them and talk to college coaches passing through.

One such coach was North Carolina State legend Kay Yow, who in addition to scouting for talent on the court, needed fresh faces who could help her program in other ways."

"At that time I wanted to coach," Jacobs explained. "Eventually I ended up going to NC State working for Coach Yow as a practice player and manager. I learned that I didn't want to coach once I saw how recruiting went. It's just not my makeup."

Jacobs graduated from North Carolina State in 2007 with a political science degree but knew basketball was his passion. He got a job on Karen Alston's staff at UNC-Charlotte, and spent another four years before Alston took the North Texas job.

As for what happened next? Jacobs isn't exactly sure, even to this day.

"From what I understand," Jacobs prefaced. "Coach [Staley] was talking to one of our assistants at an AAU Tournament. She asked, 'I have a video coordinator opening, do you know anybody that would be interested?' Then, I randomly got a call from her one day asking if I wanted to come down and interview for the job.

"And the rest is history."

Every time South Carolina practices, Jacobs cuts up the film so the assistant coaches can dive back into it later. Does one assistant coach need all the offensive sets in a package, while another requires the defensive coverages for their film breakdown? Jacobs creates two different packages and sends them separately.

When it is time to break down film for the next opponent, he has everything from their season ready. He usually has the following few teams on the schedule ready, in fact. On game days at Colonial Life Arena, you can find him sitting in front of three monitors, slicing and dicing everything he can as fast as possible.

As you can imagine come NCAA Tournament time, when the turnaround between two games is just a day, he doesn't sleep much.

"It's hectic," Jacobs said. "Part of what I try to do is stay as ahead of the curve as possible so we're not really going crazy with it. Once we hit this point, it's a hurry up and wait process. The scout is done. At this point we're looking for anything new that's put in. So while the games are going on I'll be breaking it down, the coaches will be writing the play calls, and we'll put it together right after the game."

He plans for everything, always. Last Friday after South Carolina beat Maryland in the Sweet 16, he was back in the hotel room breaking down the tape from Spokane while UConn played Oklahoma and UCLA took on Ole Miss. South Carolina would only face one of those teams in a potential National Championship game, but you can never be too far ahead of schedule.

If South Carolina beats Texas on Friday, it will play the Bruins or Huskies for all the marbles Sunday, a game with a tip-off time roughly 42 hours after Friday's would end.

In other words, nowhere near enough time to prepare a season's worth of film to scout.

Unless, of course, you're up all night, all season, diligently and meticulously labeling every half court set and defensive tendency just in case that scenario pops up in April.

"I don't know how he does it," Staley said. "He gives us anything that we need. Remotely, physically, I don't think he gets enough credit for organizing us. He's up all times of the night, he just really does all the little things. He sacrifices his time for us. He'll be over here getting videos of all the [other tournament] games while we're at practice."

He has been there every step of the way. His first year on staff was also South Carolina's first NCAA Tournament appearance under Staley. He has gone from breaking down tape of Khadijah Sessions practicing to handing her scouting reports as an assistant coach.

No two assistants are alike, and no two scouting reports flow the same. And if you think the adults in the room have different personalities, the kids who cycle in and out every season are another beast. When Winston Gandy took over for Fred Chmiel, he had to learn how to deliver film for a new assistant. He will have to do it again after Gandy departs for the head job at Grand Canyon next season.

"Hey could work for anybody," assistant coach Lisa Boyer told GamecockScoop. "He's indispensable for the assistant coaches, because we get everything from him."

How do you ensure a walk-on or a true freshman can process a scouting report the same way A'ja Wilson or Aliyah Boston did at their peaks?

Jacobs is the ultimate in adaptability.

"Some coaches pretty much want to do it themselves, and they won't ask for very much because they want to be completely hands on," Jacobs explained. "And then some coaches say, 'Hey I want all their offensive clips, all their defensive clips.' Or they're looking for specific clips on how they press, how they guard ball screens, things like that."

Jacobs is so skilled working with any deck of cards that Staley went out of her way to have him with Team USA when she accepted the head coaching job for the Olympics.

"I asked if she needed me to get anything [film] together," Jacobs remembered. "And she said, 'You're coming with me.' And I just said, 'What?'"

Garnet and black, stars and stripes, it doesn't matter.

If it's a Dawn Staley operation, Hudson Jacobs will be there.

This year, in partnership with ShotTracker, Jacobs has taken his impact to another level. Every day at practice, South Carolina's players know everything they're doing in the moment.

Shots, rebounds, percentages, everything. After every practice, each Gamecock has to make a target number of free throws before they are allowed to retreat to the locker room. The sensors are on their shoes, and the numbers are updated live on a video board in the facility so everyone knows how many free throws have gone in.

The result? South Carolina's best free throw percentage team of the 17-year Staley era so far.

"That had been in the works for awhile, and we finally got all the ducks in a row," Jacobs said. "If the player wants to walk over, they have an iPad. It's at their fingertips, it's on all the time. Even when they come into the gym on their own, as long as they put their sensor on, it's there."

His goal is to exist around South Carolina's success without taking center stage.

"You can't replace him," Boyer said. "He's irreplaceable. He does everything for us. He's really smart, he already knows what you want, he can get it really quickly and he makes it make sense."

Busy as he is, intense as the NCAA Tournament always becomes, this feeling never gets old. He works in the shadows. He grinds deep into the night, often into early mornings, to help everyone else do their jobs better.

He has been there since before Staley's first NCAA Tournament appearance, and come Sunday, might help her win a fourth National Championship.

"I would say it's just being able to be a small part of what coach has built and created and the success that she's had from when she first got here to where we are now," Jacobs said is the most rewarding thing. "To look back on it and to know how excited my dad would be to see all of this. The success and the growth is really what does it for me."

He is the engine powering the South Carolina women's basketball Ferrari.

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