The good news about Holiday Tournaments is you get to watch a lot of games in a few days. The bad news is that basically everything I could write about will be stale in mere hours.
But there is something that is bothering me and will be an issue for all teams the next 2 games. Despite being the Maui Invite, teams aren’t getting to use the soft rims of the Lahaina Civic Center, that usually are extremely forgiving and pad the count by an additional make or two.
Instead, the Stan Sherriff Center rims seem to be reacting like outdoor rims, and shooting back near misses to the moon. Through 4 games, the 8 teams have combined to shoot an abysmal 26.1% on 180 attempts. Marquette is the only team so far to make double digit 3s, but that’s in part because it took the 3rd most 3s as a percent of all field goal attempts for any single MU game in the Ken Pom era, since 1999.
But outside of the travel and backdrop and rim firmness, the biggest culprit, in my opinion, and that of dozens of peeps in my mentions, is the NBA 3-point line. For some reason, the court they are playing on has both the college men’s and NBA 3-point line on the floor, and it’s making teams shoot from just a tad further than they might normally be comfortable with.
Using Marquette as a proxy, the Blue and Gold went 5/10 from beyond the arc on treys that were in the corner, or within the NBA line. On the 22 that were clearly beyond the NBA line, Marquette shot 22.7%, making only 5 on over twice as many attempts. (Synergy is missing the part that started on ESPNU, so I’m missing the first 2 attempts.)
I took a screenshot of 15 of the clearest examples, as well as Sean Jones’ final shot where he dares to step inside the line. Scroll through them and you too will get a sense that these were not isolated incidents.
Marquette is so well schooled in not taking long 2-point jumpers that there were multiple examples of players actually stepping back and opting for a longer shot, just to not have a foot on the line.
I can’t say whether it’s psychological, physical or both, but after initially dismissing those claims, I’m ready to concede I was wrong, and assign some of that blame to the line itself.
In going back on past articles I had written, I completely forgot that MU had to start the season with the NBA line 2 seasons ago, and the differences were just as stark. Check out this entire thread.
And sure enough, Marquette even went so far as to use light tape to cover the Buck’s NBA line that season, before turning out to be a rather lethal team from distance, finishing the season making 34.4% of shots, once their floor returned.
What that means for Marquette against Kansas and Purdue/Tennessee is that corner shots, where the distance difference is negligible, become even more valuable. I don’t think they will break any multi-year lessons overnight, unfortunately, so those wing and top of the arc treys will still be a bit too far out.
One final thing, I’ve seen the copious amount of Kolek slander and simply won’t stand for it. Not only did he create (at least) 30 points just off his passing last night, he also set up teammates for a whopping 6 spot up jumpers Synergy classified as unguarded that were missed. He may have not scored a bunch, but he was getting the team extremely good looks all night.
We’ll check back tomorrow and see how teams adapted to the long line in Day 2.
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