Terps: Guarding the arc
Gary Williams was on WBAL's Sportsline with me and Loyola basketball coach Jimmy Patsos last night and pointed out the paradox a team faces when it plays Cal. The Bears shoot as well as anyone from the three-point line (43.4 percent), with Jerome Randall making nearly half of his shots from the arc (46.8 percent.) and Patrick Christopher and Theo Robertson also very accurate, but defending them on that basis is problematic because they don't shoot the three as often as you would expect with that success rate.
"Their strength is their guards,'' Williams said. "They have really good guards and they can all shoot. They are the best three-point shooting team in the country -- they shoot 42 percent from the three-point line, but what's strange about it, they don't take that many. They only take 15 or 16 a game where some of the teams we play shoot 21 or 22 per game."
If you want to hear the rest of Gary's comments on today's game, go to WBAL.com and go to my show page. The interview is right at the top of the audio highlights.
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Comments
It seems obvious to me that their percentage is so high precisely because they don't take a lot of shots. Maybe they're coached to attempt threes only when they're likely to make them, i.e, no off-balance, well-defensed lobs from 2 feet behind the line. Something to think about, Gary.
Posted by: Brandon | March 19, 2009 1:04 PM
So how come when I click the "just baseball" category a posting about college basketball is there?
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Pete's reply: Because I'm an idiot.
Posted by: Jeff V. | March 19, 2009 2:05 PM