{"id":75,"date":"2015-12-09T09:52:26","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T15:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/67.227.157.91\/~kenpom\/wp_blog\/villanovas-deceptive-3point-percentage\/"},"modified":"2015-12-09T09:52:26","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T15:52:26","slug":"villanovas-deceptive-3point-percentage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/villanovas-deceptive-3point-percentage\/","title":{"rendered":"Villanova’s deceptive 3-point percentage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Villanova has made just 28.4% of its 3-point attempts to date. They\u2019ve also taken over half of their shots from beyond the arc. It\u2019s a situation that was made more famous by its lopsided loss to Oklahoma, in which the Wildcats took a whopping 32 3-point attempts, making four<\/a>. <\/p>\n

If you didn\u2019t know any better, you\u2019d say that the Wildcats are a bad 3-point shooting team. But it\u2019s only accurate to say they have been<\/em> a poor 3-point shooting team. Based on what we know about the Wildcats\u2019 personnel, they have at least a few good shooters who just haven\u2019t shot well through the first eight games of the season. <\/p>\n

Josh Hart has made 31% of his 3\u2019s after hitting 40% over his first two seasons. Kris Jenkins has made 29% after hitting 37% prior to this season. Phil Booth is at 28% after a freshman season that saw him hit nearly half of his limited attempts. <\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have prior data for the freshman trio of Jalen Brunson, Donte DiVincenzo, and Mikal Bridges, who have combined to make just 22% of their shots. They could truly be poor shooters, and I\u2019d imagine that as freshmen, they are a step down from the returning group. But there\u2019s no way their true ability is to make 22% of their 3\u2019s. <\/p>\n

So based on what we know about the Villanova roster, the Wildcats will shoot better going forward. But even if we didn\u2019t know anything about the roster, there\u2019s enough information through eight games to suggest not only that Villanova will improve, but future opponents should assume they are a very good 3-point shooting team.<\/p>\n

Looking back at mid-December stats from previous seasons, the following things predict a team\u2019s 3-point shooting going forward, in order of importance:<\/p>\n

T1. 3-point percentage
\nT1. 2-point percentage
\n3. FT percentage
\n4. 3-point attempt rate
\n5. Turnovers<\/p>\n

Villanova has been really bad at one of these things (actual 3-point shooting), but the Wildcats have been downright dominant at the other four. They\u2019ve been killing it on 2-pointers, ranking sixth-nationally at 58.3%. And at this point in the season 2-point percentage is just as important as 3-point percentage in predicting future 3-point percentage. Their free throw percentage ranks 85th. They have the third-highest 3-point rate and their turnover rate is third-best in the country.<\/p>\n

In using these stats to predict future 3-point percentage this season, Villanova has the 36th-best projection going forward at 36.3%. Oddly, this is exactly the same projection for Oklahoma, who made 14-of-26 long-range attempts against Villanova, raising its season total to an incredible 46.5%. <\/p>\n

Keep in mind, this is just a dumb regression that doesn\u2019t directly consider personnel. Given what we know about Villanova\u2019s most frequent shooters, one can reasonably have more confidence that the Wildcats are just going through a phase. Any future opponents would be unwise to assume that Villanova has been afflicted with some sort of permanent shooting disease or that Jay Wright is thinking about abandoning his 4-out approach.<\/p>\n

Three-point shooting is prone to a lot of variation from game to game. And in order to predict future 3-point shooting this early in the season, we need more information than a team’s actual 3-point percentage to date. Three-point attempt percentage is more stable at this point, and teams that take a lot of 3\u2019s are probably decent at 3-point shooting. And it\u2019s a particularly bold statement to take a bunch of 3\u2019s while being a very good 2-point shooting team. That team is expecting to make its 3\u2019s at a very high rate.<\/p>\n

Well, that describes Villanova. And while it\u2019s unusual for a good shooting team to go through an eight-game slump, it\u2019s not impossible. I\u2019ll take the Wildcats as an above-average 3-point shooting team going forward. And there\u2019s a decent chance they shoot it better than an Oklahoma team that just burned up the nets in their presence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Villanova has made just 28.4% of its 3-point attempts to date. They\u2019ve also taken over half of their shots from beyond the arc. It\u2019s a situation that was made more famous by its lopsided loss to Oklahoma, in which the Wildcats took a whopping 32 3-point attempts, making four. If you didn\u2019t know any better, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}