correlation between FT% and 3P% SU, Duke, Louisville

[Millhouse]

This is from 1997 on

Filtered to players that shoot 4 or more 3 pointers a game that played in more than 10 games

Wanted to limit it to the real 3 point shooters.

The correlation of free throw percentage and 3 point percentage for Syracuse players meeting the criteria is .33

For Duke, it's .5

For Louisville, it's .64

Those are big differences and all those players shoot about the same from the line. Average up all those SU players, they shoot 78 % (i'm just taking each player's % and averaging it - it's unweighted)

Duke 78%,

Louisville 71%. They have a few real strange players who are terrible at shooting from anywhere that took lots of 3s.

There's something odd about SU where guys aren't getting good looks like they do at Duke. If duke was so much better at shooting than SU, their guys would be better at the free throw line.

 

[Cusefan0307]

This is from 1997 on

Filtered to players that shoot 4 or more 3 pointers a game that played in more than 10 games

Wanted to limit it to the real 3 point shooters.

The correlation of free throw percentage and 3 point percentage for Syracuse players meeting the criteria is .33

For Duke, it's .5

For Louisville, it's .64

Those are big differences and all those players shoot about the same from the line. Average up all those SU players, they shoot 78 % (i'm just taking each player's % and averaging it - it's unweighted)

Duke 78%,

Louisville 71%. They have a few real strange players who are terrible at shooting from anywhere that took lots of 3s.

There's something odd about SU where guys aren't getting good looks like they do at Duke. If duke was so much better at shooting than SU, their guys would be better at the free throw line.

Pitino likes his teams to shoot a lot of threes regardless of their percentage. Part of it I think is his teams force so many turnovers they get more possessions. They are shooting 29% this year. Chris Jones and Wayne Blackshear both have shot over 40 threes on the season and are shooting like a combined 35% from the field. I guess you don't need to shoot a good percentage if you get more possessions that end in shots compared to your opponent.

 

[Brooky03]

Pitino likes his teams to shoot a lot of threes regardless of their percentage. Part of it I think is his teams force so many turnovers they get more possessions. They are shooting 29% this year. Chris Jones and Wayne Blackshear both have shot over 40 threes on the season and are shooting like a combined 35% from the field. I guess you don't need to shoot a good percentage if you get more possessions that end in shots compared to your opponent.

Louisville always crashes the offensive glass, especially against our zone. They've had the 'throw it near the rim and go get it' offensvie strategy ever since I've been watching them.

 

[PoppyHart]

4 attempts a game seems like a lot, especially when playing in a 9-10 man rotation like many teams do.

 

[TinyManInside]

Can you provide a little bit more context on how you did this calcuation?

 

[MCC]

There's something odd about SU where guys aren't getting good looks like they do at Duke. If duke was so much better at shooting than SU, their guys would be better at the free throw line.

Without seeing the data, I suspect you could identify a problematic trend emerging since 2006 or so - and that this results from having only one reasonable 3 point threat on the floor at any given time. I think Cooney struggles under the pressure of being the sole shooter as designated by the other team's defense - they seem to track him closely.

My recollection - anecdotal, of course - is that Duke always seems to have multiple 3 point threats, and that Louisville does as well (although my opinion is that there's a large delta between Duke's 3 point weaponry and that of the other top teams).

Any trends consistent with my thesis in the SU data / personnel?

 

[Millhouse]

Can you provide a little bit more context on how you did this calcuation?

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/play-index/psl_finder.cgi

select combined seasons, syracuse, criteria of 3pt fg attempted per game >=4, games>=10

here's the output

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb...&c3val=&c4stat=&c4comp=gt&c4val=&order_by=pts

dump in excel, add formulas to get percentages, do an =correl(ft % column, 3pt % column) formula - i don't remember which columns those are.

rinse and repeat for duke and louisville

i wanted to limit it to guys who shoot a lot in a decent amount of games.

my assumption is that good outside shooters make free throws. we don't have a measure of uncontested three pointers so I use free throws to judge whether guys can make 3 pointers. in the NBA, the best free throw shooters are usually great at 3s also. harder to keep track of the zillion college teams but it seems like a fair assumption

i think there's something broken about our offense compared to better teams like duke and louisville. it's not just that we can't shoot - that would be reflected in free throws, in my opinion

 

[Millhouse]

Without seeing the data, I suspect you could identify a problematic trend emerging since 2006 or so - and that this results from having only one reasonable 3 point threat on the floor at any given time. I think Cooney struggles under the pressure of being the sole shooter as designated by the other team's defense - they seem to track him closely.

My recollection - anecdotal, of course - is that Duke always seems to have multiple 3 point threats, and that Louisville does as well (although my opinion is that there's a large delta between Duke's 3 point weaponry and that of the other top teams).

Any trends consistent with my thesis in the SU data / personnel?

i don't have the spreadsheet and the way i filtered it would eliminate other secondary 3 pt shooters who aren't shooting that much.

 

[MCC]

i don't have the spreadsheet and the way i filtered it would eliminate other secondary 3 pt shooters who aren't shooting that much.

So your correlation really "isolates" individual shooters rather than the offense they function within - I think it may therefore miss the effect of multiple threats (or lack of same).

Experiment: put Cooney on Duke and his FT% doesn't change, but I bet his 3pt% goes up since he's under less defensive pressure / scrutiny - Duke's multiple 3pt threats space the floor and preclude the defense focusing on just one threat (which SU always seems to be limited to on offense).

 

[moqui]

to MCC's point about stylistic differences - looking at Ken Pomeroy's statistic for 3 pointers as a percentage of all FG attempts, Syracuse usually ranks in the bottom 3rd nationally while Duke & Louisville are usually in the upper quartile (just eyeballing it, I didn't do the actual calculations).

Curiously - Louisville the last 4 years has been in the middle of the pack and in their 2013 title year they were in the bottom quartile

 

[Dave85]

This is from 1997 on

Filtered to players that shoot 4 or more 3 pointers a game that played in more than 10 games

Wanted to limit it to the real 3 point shooters.

The correlation of free throw percentage and 3 point percentage for Syracuse players meeting the criteria is .33

For Duke, it's .5

For Louisville, it's .64

Those are big differences and all those players shoot about the same from the line. Average up all those SU players, they shoot 78 % (i'm just taking each player's % and averaging it - it's unweighted)

Duke 78%,

Louisville 71%. They have a few real strange players who are terrible at shooting from anywhere that took lots of 3s.

There's something odd about SU where guys aren't getting good looks like they do at Duke. If duke was so much better at shooting than SU, their guys would be better at the free throw line.

Well, if I were one of the coaches, I would have the team spend more time practicing free-throws. Keep each player shooting until their arms are about to fall off. That, or get them all corrective eye surgery. If it's psychological, hire a sports shrink pronto!!!

 

[Millhouse]

So your correlation really "isolates" individual shooters rather than the offense they function within - I think it may therefore miss the effect of multiple threats (or lack of same). Experiment: put Cooney on Duke and his FT% doesn't change, but I bet his 3pt% goes up since he's under less defensive pressure / scrutiny - Duke's multiple 3pt threats space the floor and preclude the defense focusing on just one threat (which SU always seems to be limited to on offense).

I think duke just passes better. Ball whips around fast. We bog down

 

[Millhouse]

So your correlation really "isolates" individual shooters rather than the offense they function within - I think it may therefore miss the effect of multiple threats (or lack of same). Experiment: put Cooney on Duke and his FT% doesn't change, but I bet his 3pt% goes up since he's under less defensive pressure / scrutiny - Duke's multiple 3pt threats space the floor and preclude the defense focusing on just one threat (which SU always seems to be limited to on offense).

Plausible

It will be rare for us to get that many shooters because of the trade offs with length and it athleticism

 

[CusefanATL]

1 stat that i like to look at is fg%+ft%+3pg% =

syracuse is currently sitting at 131.3. (44.4 + 65.8 + 21.1)

compare that to the best shooter in the history of basketball, Kyle Korver who is currently at an astounding 203.7. (52.5 + 95.3 + 55.9!!)

Duke is currently 163.9 (53.9 + 70 + 40)

I'm still somewhat new to the study of this stat, but much like ypa for a qb, I think it is a very good predictor of offensive success. 150 is kind of an eh... type score. 160 is good. 131 is terrible. 200 is near impossible.

 

[moqui]

It will be rare for us to get that many shooters because of the trade offs with length and it athleticism

2003 had Melo, GMac & Duany (3.8 attempts per game for Q)
we had 3 shooters in 06 with Devo, Nichols & GMac
we kinda/sorta had 3 in 2010, if we stretch your definiton - Andy & Wes, then if you combine Scoop & Triche who split minutes & between them averaged over 3.5 three attempts per game.
in 2011, Scoop & Triche averaged over 4 attempts per game & Kris Joseph averaged over 3.5
in 2012, we had 5 guys who took over 100 threes each and averaged at least 2.8 per game: Scoop, Triche, Joseph, Waiters & Southerland

 

[CusefanATL]

Plausible

It will be rare for us to get that many shooters because of the trade offs with length and it athleticism

Whoa... this is time changing history at its finest. We have had great shooting teams post Gerry.

My God, the 2012 team had 5 guys who could shoot, and shoot well!

The crazy thing to me is seeing guys go from great shooters to terrible %'s. Cj, Triche, Cooney right now (but who, besides an idiot, doesn't think he'll shoot close to 35% by years end?)

Fair went from 47% on 64 3's! to like 26%! thats ridiculously bad.
Triche from 40% on 80 3;s to 33.3% to 35% to 28.8%. Thats a just ridiculous too.

 

[orange2win]

SU teams have nearly always been lousy 3PT shooting teams. A quick check since 2001 shows our position in the country has averaged 185 out of about 350. In that period we were only once in the top for 50 for the regular season (#24) and that was 2009-10, where Andy Rautins and Mooky Jones put us at 38.5% for the reg. season.

Our lowest for the reg. season was 31.2% in 2003-04. We have got a long way to go to match that miserable number this season.

 

[Fjoinkay]

SU teams usually have one or two guys who can knock down 3-point shots with regularity. SU often struggles at the free throw line going way back. And SU usually has a couple of guys who can create their shots and knock them down fairly consistently.

SU recruits for the 2-3 zone defense which may have an impact on the number of good shooting players on the roster at any given time. A really good point guard who limits turnovers and who can control tempo can make up for poor shooting especially when the defense is very good (see last season), but even last season we saw how important it is to knock down open shots.

This season SU is mostly the victim of its own success. Too many players have left early for the NBA. At the same time the shooting woes this year had to be a concern based on last season. Let's hope some of these younger players can find the range and maybe some of the older players can find some confidence.

 

[Millhouse]

2003 had Melo, GMac & Duany (3.8 attempts per game for Q)
we had 3 shooters in 06 with Devo, Nichols & GMac
we kinda/sorta had 3 in 2010, if we stretch your definiton - Andy & Wes, then if you combine Scoop & Triche who split minutes & between them averaged over 3.5 three attempts per game.
in 2011, Scoop & Triche averaged over 4 attempts per game & Kris Joseph averaged over 3.5
in 2012, we had 5 guys who took over 100 threes each and averaged at least 2.8 per game: Scoop, Triche, Joseph, Waiters & Southerland

i picked 4 because I wanted to really limit it to our biggest designated 3 pt shooters. the guys that shoot 2.8 are probably guys who are only shooting really good shots

The point of correlating this stuff was to see if guys who are good free throw shooters that shoot a lot of threes are good at it

i don't think it's just a matter of not having other shooters. it's not like teams leave duke shooters open because of other good shooters. i don't think we move the ball around the perimeter quick enough the way that other teams do.

i know this doesn't answer anything but i was just trying to see if there was any connection