Beautiful charts about our offense, but what gives?

[HailUConn]

Just came across this from a Marquette BB writer. There is no doubt in my mind that our offense will create upteen amount of open shots, but with our cache of sharpshooters such as Karaban, Spencer, Newton, and Ball to a lesser level, why we shot so poor? Is this just an aberration? What would it be like if we start hitting those open shots?

Discuss…

 

[HailUConn]

Here is another one demonstrating the same pattern:

 

[Samoo]

It's an aberration, and look out when it shifts to the norm.

 

[Icehawk]

Yeah, I mean Karaban had a game with what 0-6 3pt because of his finger? It's like our FT% it will come up. Keep taking the best shots and they'll fall.

 

[Palatine]

We hit 41% on 17 3-point shots versus Gonzaga. Have no idea how many of them were "open."

 

[Chin Diesel]

Ninety-six 3's in 11 games. A bit above 8.5 made per game. Team shooting 34%.

Put me in the group that thinks the number of 3's made per game and overall percentage will by higher by end of season than it is now.

 

[auror]

Some of it is variance, some of it is Karaban's injury, and some of it is that outside of our top 3 starters all our shooters have been bad. Non-Spencer/Karaban/Newton shooters are shooting 21.8% from 3 on the year (19/87). All those guys are either freshmen (Ball, Castle, Stewart, Ross) or have no real history of being a good shooter (Diarra, Clingan, Johnson). You'd think they will shoot better than they have so far, but we have no real reason to expect a regression, either, outside of them saying Ball and Ross can shoot in practice.

 

[61cygni]

What's the Synergy Sports definition here of spot up? How broad is it?

 

[msgordon]

this looks like a sample of about 165 shots, so relatively small; i think literally two more makes would put us at the d1 avg. as mentioned, its basically the freshman weighing us down, mainly solo. as the season progresses, i would expect solo to either start shooting better, or stop shooting quite as often; he also figures to play a little less as castle come along. stewart and ross are also 2-15 from three so far, and dont figure to be in our big game rotation. overall, its a great sign that we generate so many of these looks, and these numbers are more encouraging than worrying, if anything. spencer/karaban/newton figure to take ~75% of our threes in big games, and i don't think there's any realistic reason for concern about those guys.

 

[bendm]

hopefully the gonzaga game will be closer to what we look like from deep any given night. the BE should be scared.

 

[auror]

What's the Synergy Sports definition here of spot up? How broad is it?

Fairly broad. It's non-screen mostly catch and shooting that doesn't take very long to develop (ie not waiting until defender closes out and then faking a move and shooting or whatever)

 

[HuskyWarrior611]

Eh, we still have the #1 offense in the Big East and we’ve been blowing teams out. If it comes, it’s a cherry on top. It’s not a necessity.

It’s actually great that we know how to blow teams out while shooting like this.

 

[caw]

Injuries have hurt the percentage based solely on Karaban's finger. Throw in Spencer's feet vs Kansas and I think the percentage goes up a few ticks.

Ball is interesting. Fun fact for him. In the four games against ranked opponents (UT, KU, Zags, UNC) he is 6 of 11 from three. In the other games he is 6 of 32. No clue why that is, but it is interesting.

Diarra is not a great 3PT shooter but he's only taken 15 this year, so his percentage will vary wildly. He's 4 of 15, for 26.7%, but one more make would put him at 33%. His number of takes really makes his percentage inconclusive at best. Especially because I know at least four of those shots were last second of shot clock/half shots that he missed where he was passed the ball as a bail out.


EDIT
This team's guards are also much better than last year's team overall at attacking the rim. Hawkins was not great near the rim. Jackson was good out of the dunker's spot but a bit pass happy at times. So a lower percentage from three is OK.

 

[caw]

Also send this to any good shooters in upcoming classes, or portal transfers. Want to learn to get open shots and show off for the NBA, come to UConn.

 

[husky429]

The # of open shots per game is the much more important stat here in the long run. Shooting is fickle.

 

[ToolzieFan]

This old Ken Pomeroy article is more about 3-pt defense, but it still illustrates the variability in 3-pt shooting this early in the year. The fact that we are getting quality looks and have multiple players who have historically shot well gives me a lot of confidence that our best play is still ahead of us. That should scare a lot of teams.

https://kenpom.com/blog/3point-defense-should-not-be-defined-by-opponents-3p/

 

[Tenspro2002]

The # of open shots per game is the much more important stat here in the long run. Shooting is fickle.

Strongly agree.

Another way to put it is that our offense generating a high number of open shots is more sustainable than our shooting percentage. The process has less variance than the results.

In baseball, it's the same idea that a hitter's contact rate stabilizes a lot faster than their batting average.

 

[UCann]

I’d be interested in seeing this data broken out for the better teams vs the easier games we had. But overall, does seem to match what I’ve seen anecdotally for the most part. Karaban and Cam’s injuries plus our non shooters chucking up shots late in games I think brings down our overall %, it’s a lock to go up over time, which, as others have said, could be really scary for the competition.

 

[willie99]

IDK, I just watching us play

 

[imno1]

We’ve shot the ball well from 3 in 4 of the last 6 games. And besides the little slump Alex had if Ball was hitting at a better clip this wouldn’t even be a discussion.

 

[HuskyBoi]

I feel like, and trying not to be biased, we are the best preparation for a player to get into the NBA.

I mean, we play focusing on four players on the outside all with shooting threats while emphasizing cuts if that fails. Is that not the closest thing to what NBA teams try to do each night?

We have some beautiful selling points to recruits/transfers, and above all it's just a joy to watch.

In Hurley we trust!

 

[HuskyHawk]

I feel like, and trying not to be biased, we are the best preparation for a player to get into the NBA.

I mean, we play focusing on four players on the outside all with shooting threats while emphasizing cuts if that fails. Is that not the closest thing to what NBA teams try to do each night?

We have some beautiful selling points to recruits/transfers, and above all it's just a joy to watch.

In Hurley we trust!

The 3's or Paint shot chart is part of it. The other part is emphasis on moving the ball without the dribble and constant motion of players off the ball. There's still a lot of ISO out there on other teams. Trying to get your star to beat his man and collapse the D. Even NBA guys revert to that at times.

Think back to the Ollie years and early Hurley years and fans here were griping about not having anybody who could beat their man. You don't hear that now, even though we probably don't have anybody except maybe Castle that can break down a defender one on one. Last year we didn't have a single guy who could except Sanogo and he had to get the ball in close for that. Yet our offense is elite.

So yes, running modern motion offense and emphasizing quality shots is fantastic preparation for the NBA. We also practice defending against it in practice. I think players are seeing it and UConn is going to become an absolute NBA pipeline. I think it also makes Hurley appealing to the NBA.

 

[Kemba Time]

Early-season stats in college basketball have become a lot like spring training performance in baseball.

As fans, we love to think players perform to their true value every game, but getting kids to bring it against KenPom 300-types is among the biggest challenges coaches face and those results can really skew things early on.

We also don’t know exactly what a coach is telling his players to focusing on in a specific game, just like what a pitcher might be working on in a spring training start.

There have been pretty clear examples of letting Solo play through things and take shots against cupcakes that he isn’t pulling the trigger on in bigger matchups — or Spencer going 2-for-10 from 3 when trying to find his shot against Stonehill — along with games that the plan was obviously to force feed Donovan to work on establishing the post.

We’ll get a much better sense of how teams really stack up statistically as conference play begins.

 

[AllHusky]

Just came across this from a Marquette BB writer. There is no doubt in my mind that our offense will create upteen amount of open shots, but with our cache of sharpshooters such as Karaban, Spencer, Newton, and Ball to a lesser level, why we shot so poor? Is this just an aberration? What would it be like if we start hitting those open shots?

Discuss…

Well hopefully Marquette concludes from these stats that they can leave us open for 3, that'll work out well

 

[Chin Diesel]

Game by Game. Very inconsistent.
7-25
10-31
11-28
7-22
7-24
9-20
4-28
11-28
10-31
13-28
7-17

96-282 for the season. 34%.

4 made 3's - 1
7 made 3's- 4
9 made 3's- 1
10 made 3's- 2
11 made 3's- 2
13 made 3's- 1

Take out the 4-28 in meaningless win against UNH and you get 92-254 which is 36.2% and an average of 9.2 made per game.

Go the other way and also take out the "really good" game of 13-28 against Pine Bluff and you have 79-226 over 9 games which is 35% and an average of 8.8 per game.

What's this mean? IDK. I just had a few minutes to mess around but at the end of all this I'm still breathing easy and expecting end of season numbers to be around 36% and 9 3's made per game. And I'm fine with those numbers.