Rush The Court

*Ed. Note: This is a repost of an article that first appeared on the site November 8, 2016. 

Throughout its long and illustrious history, the sport of basketball has gone through numerous stylistic changes. For many years, the focus was on dominant post players with names like Russell, Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar and Walton. In the 1980s a shift to the era of great all-around players began. With apologies to Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson led the charge and Michael Jordan took it to the highest level. This trend of the two-way superstar continued to present day, with Kobe Bryant giving way in the last decade to LeBron James. Now, in the mid-2010s, we may be entering the dawn of a new era — the age of the three-point bomber. And if this trend is here for awhile, how will it affect the short-term future for ACC schools? In this first of a two-part look at the issue, we will examine some recent conference trends on three-point shooting.

To a great extent nowadays, college coaches borrow ideas from both the NBA and international basketball. High-major programs with a number of future pros like to use pick-and-roll or isolation sets. Coaches with less talented squads often mirror European offenses that feature a drive and kick approach with multiple long-range shooters available. Of late we have seen a dramatic stylistic shift in the NBA that incorporates much of the European model. Despite coming up short to James’ Cleveland Cavaliers in last June’s NBA Finals, the Golden State Warriors are the hottest thing in basketball right now. Led by two-time MVP Stephen Curry, the Warriors set an NBA record by averaging 13.1 made threes per game last season. But Golden State isn’t the only professional team prospering from the deep shot. Clearly seeing the value of good three-point shooting, the average NBA team attempted 24.1 three-pointers last season, compared with an average of only 18.0 just five years prior. And in terms of overall success, the five NBA teams that made the most shots from behind the arc all finished with winning records – including both championship round finalists (the Cavaliers finished second in made threes).

The college game has been heading in a similar direction, albeit at a slower pace (see chart above), but it is noteworthy that there has been a significant jump in three-point attempts. NCAA teams last season attempted 35.4 percent of their field goals from three-point range. That mark is the highest rate in history, even surpassing the seasons prior to 2009 when the three-point line was a foot closer than the current distance (20’9″). Since conference expansion restarted in the mid- 2000s, ACC teams (in conference games only) have consistently finished below the national average in three-point attempts. The ACC made 34.5 percent of its threes last season — very close to the national average of 34.7 percent — but only four other Division I leagues shot less often than the ACC’s attempt share of 33.7 percent.The above chart logs all ACC team performances in the area of three-point shooting over the last five seasons. Each bullet point marks a team’s season average (all games) in both three-point shooting accuracy (horizontal axis) and three-point attempt frequency (vertical axis). We’ve labeled the four most extreme performances (high and low) during this span. Note that two of those occurred just last season: Last year’s Syracuse team took an astonishing 42.1 percent of their field goals from distance while Virginia successfully connected on 40.2 percent of its threes. Both represent ACC high-water marks over the past five seasons. On the other end of the spectrum, Georgia Tech’s 2015 squad was the league’s worst deep shooting team at only 26.7 percent, and 2014 North Carolina was the ACC’s least likely team to take a three at just 21.1 percent of all attempts. We’ve also included a trend line in the chart that shows the relationship between three-point accuracy and frequency. This line suggests that the more accurate a team is from three-point range, the more likely that squad is to get the green light from its coach. Makes good sense.

Based on the trends we’re already seeing in the college game, we could see an explosion in three-point attempts over the next several years. Young players have historically emulated what is currently popular in the NBA. Not too long ago, kids could be seen in gyms and parks around the country working on their Allen Iverson crossover, followed by a drive to the rim or a pull-up mid-range jumper. Rest assured that nowadays 15-year old ballers are executing the same crossover only to lead into a stepback deep shot, á la Curry. So not only will college coaches be encouraged to copy the successful framework that pro teams are already using, but players entering the college game will similarly be better prepared to fire away. With this in mind, we hope that the NCAA Rules Committee will be proactive in its thinking about trends in the game and move the three-point line back at least another foot soon. If not, the offensive balance of the game may swing too far outward with as many as half of many teams’ shots coming from behind the arc.

In Part II of our analysis, we will look at which ACC coaches are most likely to embrace the burgeoning emphasis on the deep shot, and which coaches may struggle to adapt.