Arkansas Basketball is not much of a triple threat
Razorback Reels for Lipscomb and Baylor explores three-point woes and how to fix them
Through two games of the John Calipari era, Arkansas Basketball is 1-1 after a win over Lipscomb and a loss to Baylor. That result through the first week of the season shouldn’t feel surprising or upsetting to Razorback fans. As a matter of fact, The Pig Sty’s season preview article from last week warned you to expect that exact result.
What does feel surprising is how dreadful the Hogs have been from three-point range in those first two games. It’s, like, bad bad. Arkansas is 9-39 from deep. That’s just 23.1 percent, which is 340th in college basketball.
340th.
If I tried, I couldn’t name 339 other teams, so the Hogs clearly have work to do in that area, even if we are discussing an incredibly small sample size. Sometimes you don’t need extra evidence to diagnose a problem. It’s like the first signs of food poisoning. You don’t need more toilet hugging data to know exactly what’s wrong. If you’ve read The Pig Sty regularly, you’ll also know that modernizing the offense is a big sticking point for me.
The Hogs have got to get every shooter more clean looks from deep. Here’s how shooters who attempt at least one shot per game from beyond the arc are currently fairing:
Zvonimir Ivisic: 50% (1 attempt per game)
Adou Theiro: 40% (2.5 attempts per game)
Boogie Fland: 31% (6 attempts per game)
Karter Knox: 20% (2 attempts per game)
Johnell Davis: 11% (4.5 attempts per game)
DJ Wager: 0% (2 attempts per game)
The good news is that across those nine made three-pointers (all of which you’ll see today), some patterns emerge that should give a clue about how Arkansas can increase their made percentage.
I’m closing in on more paragraphs in this introduction than the Hogs have made three-pointers, so let’s roll the film!
Threes in Transition
In the basketball chess match, being able to get your shot before the defense is fully set or while the defenders are scrambling back to their spots or men in transition is a solid recipe for getting cold shooters going.
Ivisic’s lone three point conversion this season came off this transition attempt:
Ivisic fills the lane well in transition while DJ Wagner applies pressure to the rim, with little resistance until he got all the way to the cup. Because Lipscomb defenders are matching up with the nearest man, Ivisic is being played by a guard, so he got a clean look over a much smaller player with the outcome of the game still in the balance.
Fland has gotten in on the transition three game as well.
The Hogs dialed up some pressure on this possession, trapping the Baylor ballhandler in the coffin corner. He throws a wild pass that Trevon Brazile picks off before kicking out to Fland who steps back, squares up, and puts in.
Ball movement and dribble moves to create space
If the name of the game is getting shooters clean looks, one easy way to do that is quick ball movement. Check out these two Thiero buckets from the Baylor game:
The Hogs kept the ball moving around the perimeter of the zone, and Theiro didn’t hesitate to shoot the ball when the defense was slow to rotate back to him. That’s advantage creation 101, and kudos to Thiero for staying aggressive looking for a shooting window.
The key, though, is quick decisive ball movement. Here’s Fland hitting a shot after a decent closeout, but make no mistake that the quick ball movement got him that sliver of daylight he needed:
Knox’s lone clip in this bunch demonstrates a different method for getting shooting space:
Knox gets the Lipscomb defender to bite on a good ball fake toward the baseline. He then takes one dribble toward the elbow and then steps back for a wide open look from deep. No one would argue with taking this shot after dribble moves put his defender in a tilt-a-whirl.
Ball Screens
When simple ball movement and dribble moves aren’t working to create shooting space, the next action would be to put your shooters in screening action to manifest that space. The Hogs have used ball screens in different ways to get shooters open.
One way a team can use ball screens is to force a switch for a favorable matchup.
Davis and Brazile run a dribble handoff around the left slot, and Brazile screens again to force his man to switch onto Davis. Davis passes the ball off and then gets it back at the top of the key. The bigger Lipscomb defender sags off him out of respect for his driving ability. Davis uses that coverage to pull up and knock down a three from the top of the key.
Another way a shooter can use ball screens to his advantage is when the defense goes under the screen, which the Lipscomb defender does in this example. Jonas Aidoo sets a strong screen, and the defender moves quickly under it, but that’s all the crack in the window that Fland needs for this jumper.
Rejecting the screen is another option, as seen here:
Sometimes, when a defender anticpates a screen coming, they overcorrect and start moving in that direction early (i.e., a screen is coming on my left that I’m going to try to get over, so I’m going to start moving to my left now and beat the screener to the spot). That gives the ballhandler the ability to either stay put or move the opposite direction to create space.
Thiero comes up to set a ball screen, and you can see the Baylor defender reach out in that direction. Fland uses that hesitation to take one dribble in the opposite direction and pull up from there.
Key Takeaways
The key takeaway from today’s reels is pretty simple. The Hogs have got to find cleaner looks from three if they want to see that three-point field goal percentage improve. However, despite their low numbers, it isn’t all doom-and-gloom because they have already shown signs of creating those looks. The Hogs will be more successful from three if they a) take more three-point attempts in transition, b) use ball movement to create space against zones (which they will see lots of until their percentage increases), and c) use ball screens to create advantages.