Miami has 9 guys getting at least 9 minutes per game.
All 5 starters are shooting 40% or better from 3.
Plus they have 2 guys off the bench shooting 50% and 39% from 3.
(2nd in nation in team 3 Pt %)
They are shooting 78% on FTs
Also shooting 57% on two’s.
Crazy shooting team.
And yet only 35th nationally in offensive rating.
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@haney 3pt defense has been a topic in NBA world too. This probably the best simple summation of the 3pt% defense-skeptic side:
https://x.com/sethpartnow/status/1732566546168312293?s=46&t=wAzMZR-0PRGT1LpN6U5x0g
https://x.com/sethpartnow/status/1732571855565828343?s=46&t=wAzMZR-0PRGT1LpN6U5x0g
And if you have an Athletic subscription: NBA Defensive Shot Quality: Why process is more important than the numbers - The Athletic
Of vital importance here is a reminder of what I’m not arguing. It can be easy to interpret “defenses don’t have a great deal of control over opponent 3-point shotmaking” as positing that there is no such thing as defending the 3 well. I don’t believe that to be the case, and would make the more modest claim that opponent 3-point field goal percentage is a poor measure of how well teams defend the arc. There has been tons of public and private research on the topic and it generally reaches similar conclusions, with even those studies finding there is some signal in 3-point percentage allowed concluding that to the extent teams can hold down opponent 3FG%, it’s a result of things which are generally recognized as “good defense” rather than specific methods for contesting shots or “leaving the right guys open.”
Though it comes up almost every time a team gets off to a great start in opponent 3FG%, “leaving the right guys open” is not a thing. Especially over finite stretches of games, teams might end up with worse shooters getting looks against them, this is as much about the vagaries of the mix of foes as anything else.
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Feel like most recent Miami teams are talented but play sloppy in the early regular season. Don’t seem to lock in defensively until they have to in the late season/post season. But then they have enough talent that they can be as dangerous as anyone when they actually care.
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Gasaway used to have a metric that was something like offensive rebounds minus TOs, basically, how many shots does your team attempt relative to the other side.
UNC typically did really well, and it helped explain how they’d have excellent offenses despite mediocre shooting%.
Edit - He said something like, “People talk about possession efficiency, but quantity’s is it’s own kind of quality”.
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Carson Edwards: “This true.”
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Thanks - will check this out in a bit more depth. Ken had a chat with Seattle Hoo back in the day and did talk about defense affecting shot mix much more…
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Also Clemson seems to annually start off hot and then melt down during first month of league play.
They’ll be a Quad II by the time they come to Charlottesville.
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Yup. In very simple terms the claim isn’t ‘3 point defense is just randomness’. It’s you measure 3 point defense by 3PA allowed rather than by 3 point % allowed
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Yup. He called it Shot Volume.
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I don’t think it is true Clemson will be a Quad II by the time we play them on Feb.3rd at Clemson…we go there. I agree with what you said about Clemson historically, but not sure it applies to this team. PJ Hall is always a problem and he is complemented very well by Ian Schieffelin, which does a little bit of everything, including averaging 9.8 rebounds per game. They added Girard, who can get very hot from beyond the arc and Chase Hunter is an offensive threat in multiple ways.
Having said that they haven’t proven anything, IMO. They had a very nice win at Alabama, but every other win has been sub 50 to sub 100 KenPom teams. For all those in the media who are on the Clemson team after last night, I think it exposed them. South Carolina is #53 KenPom with a meh defense, yet it was that defense that gave them fits in the first half. Not really an impressive win.
We will know a little more about them with TCU at home on Saturday, and at Memphis on the 16th; TCU #32 and Memphis #41.
I am skeptical of them at this point, but they may be very legit. Regardless, I don’t see them being a Quad II win if we do win.
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Clemson will absolutely be a Q1 game for us, given that it’s in Littlejon.
The biggest thing for Clemson right now is just how well the Joe Girard addition is working out for them. This is a team that’s made its bones over the years with all-ACC forwards/centers (going back to Jaron Blossomgame, Aamir Simms, Hunter Tyson, and now PJ Hall), and well coached team defense utilizing system vets. But what Brownell has never been able to really deploy was a confident volume perimeter scorer to provide balance to the offense.
Girard, meanwhile, is finally being properly coached, Brownell running circles around late-stage-Boeheim in terms of X’s-and-O’s and player development. Girard is posting the best A:TO ratio of his 5 year career, 3.4 apg vs 1.3 topg. And most importantly he’s hitting 3’s at a 45.5% clip on nearly 7 attempts a game.
Is his defense questionable as he unlearns the Zone? Sure. But it really doesn’t matter too much when they’ve got system vets at the other four spots on the floor able to cover up his mistakes. And bad defense from a lead guard is less damaging than bad defense from your interior.
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But 5 more FT attempts
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Miami’s got ridiculous shooting numbers both inside the arc and outside it, and do ultimately have a Top 20 offensive efficiency on KenPom. By and large their problems are still defensive in nature primarily. That said, being so undersized, they do offensive rebound very poorly as a team (Ormier and sometimes the young backup centers individually do okay), and have very mediocre ball security, 12th in the ACC in offensive turnover rate.
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I don’t know about a melt down but the Tigers do have a tough stretch of their schedule leading up to playing UVA.
TCU, at Memphis, at Miami, at FSU, at Duke
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Wow, yep, that’ll tell us a lot about them.
Every time I see PJ Hall play think he should be at UVA
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Yeah that was my point really. They have a really tough stretch coming up and resume somewhat soft.
I mistakenly thought that we were playing Clemson at home. So retract my statement - will be a Quad I but don’t think Clemson will be top 30 net. I think they drop a few.
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Yeah, maybe a hot take, but I’d take a bet (probably with odds) that Clemson hasn’t yet played a tourney team**, so it’s tough to say what they are at this point. I think they’re probably better than last year, given good health and Girard shooting (but no Tyson is kinda tough…
** Bama - 50-50. I will go no.
Boise State - 30-70
So Car - Nah, they’ll get buried in conference, I’d expect
Pitt - 30-70. Unimpressive noncon
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Also recently stated listening to Field of 68. Good to keep up nationally. It’s annoying though that everyone reads from the same script re: Virginia but I get it.
Used to somewhat defend Chris Mack as being fine but man he is a moron. Called Reece, Royce Beekman. Stated we were still going to have to figure out how to play without Kihei. Expected him or Tyler Hansborough at least to be able to go off script.
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By and large their problems are still defensive in nature primarily.
By and large? They flat out don’t guard. Elite offensive efficiency is paramount if they play any team remotely competent on defense.
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