I didnt mean to stumble onto a Jay Wright secret … but that may have been what happened this week when I started to research a potential blog topic.
Recently, Ive been fascinated by the work of analyst Will Schreefer, especially when it comes to the excellent (and free) shot-chart tool hes created for college basketball players.
And one thing, in particular, interested me: his breakout on the site of NBA 3s.
So I wondered how KU fared when it came to this aspect. I sent Schreefer a message, and he was nice enough to send back the data that hes compiled from available sources online.
The verdict? KU was a good NBA 3-point shooting team last season. The Jayhawks made 38.9 percent of their long-range 3s, which was well above the NCAA average of 34.5 percent for those shots.
Something else caught my attention, though, when Schreefer sent over the results by team.
NBA 3s made-NBA 3s
att., Missing games
Villanova 327-832, 2
Michigan 249-691, 3
Marshall 240-673, 0
Wash. St. 231-623, 0
Utah 219-608, 0
Oregon 211-605, 2
Marquette 258-604, 2
UTSA 202-593, 1
Seton Hall 224-589, 2
Gonzaga 217-585, 3
Auburn 210-585, 2
Florida 218-580, 3
Kansas 225-578, 3
Before going further, lets get a couple of needed caveats out of the way.
1. The above leader-board does not include all Division I schools. The site Schreefer uses has data from about 40 percent of games, which includes a heavy emphasis on the Power Five programs. You can see the number of missing games from the sample on the right of each school above.
2. The shot-chart data Schreefer uses appears to be entered by hand, so the length of shots is an estimation. This means it wont be perfect, but without camera tracking like MLB has, its about the best we can do for now.
Having said all that … the top teams above are intriguing to say the least.
Villanova by far leads the way. While this shouldnt be shocking (Villanova took a lot of 3s last season, so it stands to reason that some of those were from distance), it is worth noting that Wright likely wasnt limiting his players to only attempts with toes right behind the line.
The Wildcats national championship foe Michigan is second on the list, and thats even with three games missing from its data set.
And in third place? Marshall, which actually makes sense considering its coach. Dan DAntoni his younger brother Mike is the Houston Rockets coach became a darling of the basketball analytics community in 2016 following his postgame rant about the value of 3-pointers.
If we trust the data to be mostly reliable, those three teams clearly put themselves ahead of others when it comes to shooting long 3s.
And though I hadnt thought about it much until now, those squads could be gaining an edge by doing so.
