Trivia Question (try guessing before looking)

[Norm Peterson]

In a different thread, I talked about the number of players on our team next year who could potentially hit 40% or better from 3-point range. Some have already done it; others it doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination to think they could.

 

Keisei Tominaga, Trevor Lakes, Teddy Allen, Bryce McGowens, and Lat Mayen all could potentially shoot that well and on a volume basis.

 

Believe it or not, the last guy we had who shot 40% or better on at least 50 attempts was Andrew White III who connected on 41.2% of his 211 attempts in 2015-16.

 

So, here's the question: In the last TEN SEASONS of Nebraska basketball (going back to the 2010-2011 season), what other players besides White have shot at least 40% from 3-point range on at least 50 attempts?

 

 

Disclaimer: Obviously, we've had some guys shoot better than 40% on less than 50 attempts but I'm not counting those players because that's a small enough sample size that there could be a regression to the mean that would become apparent with more attempts. Besides, if you attempt fewer than 2 treys per game, you're really not much of a 3-point threat. So, while 50 is an arbitrary number, I needed some way to filter out the Samari Curtises who shot 40% on 5 total attempts.

[Vinny]

Watson and Pitchford? 

[uneblinstu]

Bear Jones

[uneblinstu]

6 minutes ago, uneblinstu said:

Bear Jones

I went and looked it up. I was way off. One answer I thought about. The rest I never would have come up with. 

Edited November 24, 2020 by uneblinstu

[jdw]

Anton Gill had to have been close his senior year.

[Blackshirt83]

 

 

I would assume Walt did it in his one good year. Other than that I honestly would be more surprised if anyone did than if they didn't. I know Webster didn't shoot 40% from deep his junior year and he was as good if not better that year from 3 than anyone in that timeframe. So if he didn't hit that mark I doubt anyone else over the past 10 years did.

[aphilso1]

Wow.  Great question.  Here's my shot in the dark...hopefully at least one of them is correct.

 

Ryan Anderson, Nate Hawkins, and Bear Jones.

[skerbball]

Lance Jeter in ‘10-‘11? I feel like we had a decent shooting team that season. 

[nuhusker7]

Shields?

[TheKamdyMan]

Paul Velander?  I might be off on the decade part but that's about the last one I can think off.

[The Polish Rifle]

Evan Taylor I believe shot it real well, attempts might be a problem. 

[hhcmatt]

1 hour ago, TheKamdyMan said:

Paul Velander?  I might be off on the decade part but that's about the last one I can think off.

 

I looked this one up. Velander's last year was 2009. He shot 40% on the nose that year.

[TheKamdyMan]

10 minutes ago, hhcmatt said:

 

I looked this one up. Velander's last year was 2009. He shot 40% on the nose that year.

 

[Handy Johnson]

Just spitballing here: Pitchford, Gallegos, Evan Taylor

[Norm Peterson]

It's striking to look back on our stats from last year and see that our VERY BEST 3-point shooter, Thor, was 37.2% on 129 attempts. For an offense that relies heavily on the 3-point shot, we didn't have anyone make more than Thor's 48. And the second best percentage by anyone with more than a handful of attempts was Haanif Cheatham with 34.4% of 93 attempts.

 

With numbers like that, it's not hard to understand why we sucked out loud last year. But, if you go back through the stat sheets over the last decade, we have simply not recruited or developed a lot of good perimeter shooters.

 

I'll give the answer to the trivia question later -- after more people have an opportunity to take a guess. But if you want to dig through things yourself, here's a link: https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/team/stats/_/id/158

[basketballjones]

Is 09/10 considered in the last decade? Because if so that changes the answer. 

If so:
Ryan Anderson
Bear Jones

Walter Pitchford

I cheated - I've looked this up before. 

Edited November 24, 2020 by basketballjones

[hugh42]

58 minutes ago, Norm Peterson said:

It's striking to look back on our stats from last year and see that our VERY BEST 3-point shooter, Thor, was 37.2% on 129 attempts. For an offense that relies heavily on the 3-point shot, we didn't have anyone make more than Thor's 48. And the second best percentage by anyone with more than a handful of attempts was Haanif Cheatham with 34.4% of 93 attempts.

 

With numbers like that, it's not hard to understand why we sucked out loud last year. But, if you go back through the stat sheets over the last decade, we have simply not recruited or developed a lot of good perimeter shooters.

 

I'll give the answer to the trivia question later -- after more people have an opportunity to take a guess. But if you want to dig through things yourself, here's a link: https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/team/stats/_/id/158

 

Miles and Doc both recruited players that were slashers/scorers as opposed to shooters. But you can go back even further. Collier didn't recruit shooters either which was a bit surprising and Nee recruited scorers as well. The common theme is that all of these coaches, recruited players that were athletic enough to compete in the Big 8/12/10. What we ended up with most of the time were guys who had decent athleticism, but were average basketball players and mostly below average shooters. There have been some exceptions, but very few.

[brfrad]

Pitchford and Gallegos, maybe?

[Norm Peterson]

The high water mark this century saw a team average just shy of 40% as a team. That's better as a team than some of the best individual shooters in other years, which is kind of crazy. The low water mark this century was 27.7% as a team in Collier's third season. The very next year, they shot 39.1% from three. But our best 3-pt shooting team this century hit 39.7% under Doc in 2009-2010 when we won 2 games in conference and finished with an overall losing record. Isn't that kind of ironic/funny? 

[uneblinstu]

25 minutes ago, hugh42 said:

 

Miles and Doc both recruited players that were slashers/scorers as opposed to shooters. But you can go back even further. Collier didn't recruit shooters either which was a bit surprising and Nee recruited scorers as well. The common theme is that all of these coaches, recruited players that were athletic enough to compete in the Big 8/12/10. What we ended up with most of the time were guys who had decent athleticism, but were average basketball players and mostly below average shooters. There have been some exceptions, but very few.

Part of that is simply that the game has evolved quite a bit even in the past decade. There weren’t many teams that had a bunch of shooters, much less several that shot north of 40%. I always wanted NU to do something different from what everyone else did, but they never chose to do that. 

[Norm Peterson]

24 minutes ago, uneblinstu said:

Part of that is simply that the game has evolved quite a bit even in the past decade. There weren’t many teams that had a bunch of shooters, much less several that shot north of 40%. I always wanted NU to do something different from what everyone else did, but they never chose to do that. 

 

Not sure I agree. Below are the team 3-pt% numbers for each season for Creighton and Nebraska from 2002-03 to present. Creighton on top. Our years we won in bold; theirs they lost underlined. (We split in 2003-04 with us winning in the NIT.) The winning team had the better season-long 3-pt% numbers (ergo a better shooting team) 14 out of 19 times.

 

38.9, 37.9, 41.5, 35.7, 34.4, 37.0, 38.3, 32.6, 35.8, 42.5, 42.1, 42.1, 34.5, 35.2, 39.9, 37.6, 39.4, 38.6

 

27.7, 39.1, 31.7, 34.8, 37.5, 34.3, 36.4, 39.7, 32.1, 32.4, 30.7, 33.9, 28.4, 34.7, 32.0, 34.9, 33.9, 31.8

 

It appears to just be a difference in recruiting philosophy rather than evolution of the game, and theirs appears to have been a more effective long-term strategy, one we now appear to be adopting under Coach Hoiberg.

 

 

[Norm Peterson]

2 hours ago, hugh42 said:

Miles and Doc both recruited players that were slashers/scorers as opposed to shooters. But you can go back even further. Collier didn't recruit shooters either which was a bit surprising and Nee recruited scorers as well. The common theme is that all of these coaches, recruited players that were athletic enough to compete in the Big 8/12/10. What we ended up with most of the time were guys who had decent athleticism, but were average basketball players and mostly below average shooters. There have been some exceptions, but very few.

 

Indeed. But the thing that always puzzled me is you get 13 scholarships. You can't use one of them on a solid perimeter shooting threat?

 

So, one of the things that got me thinking about this topic was if you could take any single one of those 4-5 players who stand a good shot at being north of 40% on shooting treys and put them on, hell, any Miles team that didn't have a full roster, or any of the poor shooting teams under Doc or Collier, and could the addition of a good shooter have been enough to get us to the dance floor any of those years we failed to make it?

 

How many of those past teams could have used a guy like Trevor Lakes or Keisei Tominaga, neither of whom will likely be among the top 3-4 options on our squad next year?

[Navin R. Johnson]

1 hour ago, Norm Peterson said:

 

Indeed. But the thing that always puzzled me is you get 13 scholarships. You can't use one of them on a solid perimeter shooting threat?

 

So, one of the things that got me thinking about this topic was if you could take any single one of those 4-5 players who stand a good shot at being north of 40% on shooting treys and put them on, hell, any Miles team that didn't have a full roster, or any of the poor shooting teams under Doc or Collier, and could the addition of a good shooter have been enough to get us to the dance floor any of those years we failed to make it?

 

How many of those past teams could have used a guy like Trevor Lakes or Keisei Tominaga, neither of whom will likely be among the top 3-4 options on our squad next year?

 

Agree with both of you. I felt in the past we passed over some kids that could shoot because they were not athletic enough to guard people in our conference. We had slashers with no where to go because the lane was always clogged up with defenders who didn't care if their man had the ball.

The saying offense wins games but defense wins championships can be true but the saying offense wins games and more offense wins more games can work as well.

[hugh42]

4 hours ago, uneblinstu said:

Part of that is simply that the game has evolved quite a bit even in the past decade. There weren’t many teams that had a bunch of shooters, much less several that shot north of 40%. I always wanted NU to do something different from what everyone else did, but they never chose to do that. 

 

The game has changed a lot in this regard no doubt, but we rarely have had one guy that the opponent had to respect from beyond the arc. I think for NU, coaching philosophy probably has played a larger role in why we have lacked shooters.

[hugh42]

3 hours ago, Norm Peterson said:

 

Indeed. But the thing that always puzzled me is you get 13 scholarships. You can't use one of them on a solid perimeter shooting threat?

 

So, one of the things that got me thinking about this topic was if you could take any single one of those 4-5 players who stand a good shot at being north of 40% on shooting treys and put them on, hell, any Miles team that didn't have a full roster, or any of the poor shooting teams under Doc or Collier, and could the addition of a good shooter have been enough to get us to the dance floor any of those years we failed to make it?

 

How many of those past teams could have used a guy like Trevor Lakes or Keisei Tominaga, neither of whom will likely be among the top 3-4 options on our squad next year?

 

I agree. If we did go after shooters, we sure haven't had much success in landing them. Glad to see that this will be different going forward.