Reply To: Holy Cross – Game 27 (PL's 14th)

Forum Forum Lehigh Sports Lehigh Men’s Basketball Holy Cross – Game 27 (PL's 14th) Reply To: Holy Cross – Game 27 (PL's 14th)

#13647
Bison137
Bison137
Participant

Quote: “Actually, one thing bothers me, and it makes me confused at the same time. If you take a look to 3-point stats, it is easy to figure out who’s on the top with 45.8%. The next best is 39.1% and so on. If you isolate PL games only, SC is actually 50% from 3-point line. How many shooters in D1 have % so high, I’m wondering. How could you afford not to place the ball to his hands to let him to shoot at least 7-8 times per game (no play for him at all). Last two games he had only 2 “accidental” shots in each game (1of2). As far as I understand this game 3-point shot is a very powerful weapon. Do we use it properly?…I don’t thinks so”

A few comments:

1. SC is a spot-up 3-point shooter, who is not a threat to take the ball to the basket and who doesn’t really create his own shot. So whether he gets a lot of open looks from three – or a few or none at all – mostly depends on the defense. Do they give a lot of help inside? Do they switch on picks? How do they defend ball screens? Etc. The only way LU could guarantee him 7-8 three point attempts a game would be to tell him to chuck up bad shots while closely guarded.

2. Three-point percentages from year to year are very inconsistent for many shooters – since the number of attempts is usually fairly low and a lot of it depends on usage, game context, confidence, and whether a player has a couple of hot streaks. SC hit 37% of his threes his first two years – on 130 attempts. That’s reasonably good (the PL average this year is 36.4%) but certainly far from great. It may be that Reed, from watching SC in practice for three years, views that as his natural level and doesn’t want any forced threes from him. In PL play this year, he is hitting 47% – but that is on a sample size of 36 shots. Not a lot of shots to draw any dramatic conclusions. Had he missed three more shots, he’d be close to his historic 37%.

3. One example of the context of the game was SC’s 3-point streak vs Bucknell when he hit 4-4 from beyond the arc in a fairly short time span in the second half. He got those open looks because Bucknell has no true center and opted to double-team Kempton whenever he established good post position. Good ball movement then led to open shots for SC. Had Bucknell opted to play SC straight up with a good defender, he wouldn’t have had those open looks – but Kempton (and Goldsborough) would have scored more. So the big men and the ball-handlers deserve a fair amount of credit for those threes.