I agree with this. I’d also quibble with MSU in 2019, but otherwise agree, at least back to 2014 or so, when I cease being able to do this off the top of my head.
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My bad I confused the field from that year. Yea ahead of time most people thought UConn had no chance and they did end up winning it.
And I don’t know how to lay it out better than Haney did above. I agree with his take about what constitutes a reasonable projection.
To loop it back around (the main idea has gone way off the tracks) all I was trying to lay out was you don’t have to say every team with a Final Four ceiling also has a national title ceiling. Just like every team you think has a Sweet Sixteen ceiling doesn’t also have a Final Four ceiling and every team you see with a tournament ceiling doesn’t necessarily have a Sweet Sixteen ceiling. At least when trying to make ‘reasonable’ projections.
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Reece!!
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Will the J-Willy show podcast be back again this year? If so, any idea when it might kickoff? That show is entertainment gold!!!
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I’m telling y’all, he’s gonna be so good
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BTW – I am SO glad that we didn’t have to play Sparty in the Natty game. Snake bit shizz be real – and we ain’t got nothing but bad history with Izzo & Co. Simply Facts.
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That team was winning a title no matter what
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I’ve been working on some player previews recently for the upcoming season, just finished this one on Reece Beekman. He’s a really good defender (probably the best one on the team this season), and if the shot can go from “very bad” to “passable” I think his offensive game will look a lot better as one of the primary options this year.
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Can we make it so every comment response to this tweet is “Are you going to stream it online?” Bonus points for anyone who says “Are you going to stream it online? Some of us how immune compromised loved ones even if we are ourselves are vaccinated. Its a pandemic regardless the least you could do is increase accessibility”
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Hell yes! Last one wasn’t streamed though and I’m gonna guess this one won’t be either. Need someone to live tweet if that’s the case
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Done!!
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Done
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I think people are overestating how much Reece’s 3 point shooting is a key to his success and team success this year. We really just need Reece to be the guy he was in high school. If he can do that against ACC athletes we can bump Kihei to the 2 and Reece’s 3% becomes a relative non issue. Expecting Reece to go to a mid 30% 3 point shooter in one offseason is unfair imo. Much more reasonable to ask Kihei to match his 19/20 3% on a slightly higher volume.
Love the bold DPOY pick. Reece is going to give a masterclass on how to impact winning without needing to score a bunch this year.
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I’d separate out a few things:
- Reece needs to become a competent if not good 3-point shooter to have an NBA shot
- I agree that Reece’s 3pt % is less important if he plays more 1 (and Kihei plays 2, or someone plays 2)
- However, under any state of the world he does need to get much better at hitting unguarded 3s. I think I read the Synergy stats were something like 25% on unguarded 3s. That does need to improve.
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Of course but let’s have reasonable expectations for that improvement. As you said he was only 25% on uncontested 3’s. He’s not going to jump to 35% on all 3’s in one offseason. Nor does he need to for our offense to be successful. I just think anyone looking at Reece’s shooting as one of the top 2-3 keys to the season is both missing a lot of the picture and hoping for an unrealistically large jump.
More important (and realistic) that the things Reece excelled at in high school and AAU play translate consistently this season and he makes a smaller improvement as a shooter.
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fwiw, here’s the brief snippet of the Athletic article where I found that stat:
“To underscore how much defenses were willing to let Beekman beat them: He was unguarded on 84 percent of his jumpers, and he still only made 25 percent of those.”
So that may have been all jumpers, not just 3s.
… And of course I just realized that @hoopsandhoos had the same stat in his article.
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Fwiw, on Synergy they just have an option that breaks down jump shooting splits by contest (“wide open”,“open”,“contested”, etc — I believe it’s by the distance of the closest defender, at least that’s how it works for NBA data). So it’s for all shots, though I don’t remember Reece taking many wide open midrange jumpers, so it’s still probably mostly threes.
Also, Synergy charging $30/month for CBB data when the NBA makes a ton of Synergy data publicly available for their league… pretty frustrating.
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