Two-Point Jumpers: the Stats

[Taj79]

Over in the "St. Louis Area Players" thread, kshoe asked the question about stats on how our other players shot the two-point shot vis-a-vis JJ's shooting. roy then brought into play the Pitino philosphy that if you can't dunk, shoot a three making the two-point shot the worst value shot of the game. It was/is an interesting juxtaposition, to say the least.

So I went back and did each play-by-play for the 2012-13 season as laid out over on ESPN. I did not count dunks, tip-ins, lay-ups or three-point shots (as was the case when I tallied JJ all season) and did the comparison. (Disclaimer: old eyes may have missed a few things but not so much to be a major difference if you ask me):

Name FGA FGM PCT

Jett 63 25 .397

Evans 105 38 .362

Ellis 55 8 .145

Manning 25 8 .320

McCall 45 13 .289

Loe 33 9 .273

Remekun 33 11 .333

Barnett 5 0 .000

Mitchell 32 11 .344

Glaze 14 4 .286

Some interesting stuff here. JJ took the second-most amount of mid-range jumpers on the year, almost getting lapped by Evans. But short of Evans, nopody made more. And JJ's attempts were even double th eattempts by Ellis, McCall and Mitchell each --- somethign I di dnot expect seeing as, in my mind, these were our "shooters." But our shooters bomb from deep, not in the middle. I was surprised by Mitchell's lack of numbers, but when you compare his 32 jumpers against his taking 92 treys, Mitchell favored the three-point shot over the two-point shot by a 3-to-1 margin, again ignoring the "close-in" shots. And he was hurt to begin the season. If my numbers are correct, and you back out 124 of Evans' 311 total shots on the season, that means a little over 60% of Evans' shots are dunks, lay-ups and tip ins. That seems incredible even without anything to compare it to. Beast mode? I'll say.

Odds and ends: Manning made just as many shots from 2 as Ellis did. Ellis' shot 14.5% from two, but 33% from three. The two guys I would seem to WANT to take the two ... Ellis and McCall .... have the two lowest shooting percentages for such a shot in last year's lineup. Barnett was the epitome of Pitino's philosophy altered only so slightly --- he made either a lay-up or a three --- nothing inbetween.

Which I think pretty much sums up our overall offensive philosphy.

[West Pine Jim]

Very interesting, Taj, very interesting. The advent of the 3-pt. shot really changed basketball and offensive philosophy. Useless to even speculate how this team would have fared in say, 1972.

[jbizzle09]

Over in the "St. Louis Area Players" thread, kshoe asked the question about stats on how our other players shot the two-point shot vis-a-vis JJ's shooting. roy then brought into play the Pitino philosphy that if you can't dunk, shoot a three making the two-point shot the worst value shot of the game. It was/is an interesting juxtaposition, to say the least.

So I went back and did each play-by-play for the 2012-13 season as laid out over on ESPN. I did not count dunks, tip-ins, lay-ups or three-point shots (as was the case when I tallied JJ all season) and did the comparison. (Disclaimer: old eyes may have missed a few things but not so much to be a major difference if you ask me):

Name FGA FGM PCT

Jett 63 25 .397

Evans 105 38 .362

Ellis 55 8 .145

Manning 25 8 .320

McCall 45 13 .289

Loe 33 9 .273

Remekun 33 11 .333

Barnett 5 0 .000

Mitchell 32 11 .344

Glaze 14 4 .286

Some interesting stuff here. JJ took the second-most amount of mid-range jumpers on the year, almost getting lapped by Evans. But short of Evans, nopody made more. And JJ's attempts were even double th eattempts by Ellis, McCall and Mitchell each --- somethign I di dnot expect seeing as, in my mind, these were our "shooters." But our shooters bomb from deep, not in the middle. I was surprised by Mitchell's lack of numbers, but when you compare his 32 jumpers against his taking 92 treys, Mitchell favored the three-point shot over the two-point shot by a 3-to-1 margin, again ignoring the "close-in" shots. And he was hurt to begin the season. If my numbers are correct, and you back out 124 of Evans' 311 total shots on the season, that means a little over 60% of Evans' shots are dunks, lay-ups and tip ins. That seems incredible even without anything to compare it to. Beast mode? I'll say.

Odds and ends: Manning made just as many shots from 2 as Ellis did. Ellis' shot 14.5% from two, but 33% from three. The two guys I would seem to WANT to take the two ... Ellis and McCall .... have the two lowest shooting percentages for such a shot in last year's lineup. Barnett was the epitome of Pitino's philosophy altered only so slightly --- he made either a lay-up or a three --- nothing inbetween.

Which I think pretty much sums up our overall offensive philosphy.

Thanks, Taj! I was compiling the stats over the weekend as well and never did finish it. I had gotten to Ellis and was shocked at how low his mid-range jumper % was. I agree with the Pitino and Majerus stance on mid-range jumpers; they are the worst value shot. The one real value you get with that shot is in making the defender respect the shot and provide space. Once you make one, the defender tends to guard you closer, providing space in the lane and at the rim.

Another thing this shows is that Jett was the best 'mid-range' shooter on the team, and took the 2nd most shots. It makes sense to me that Jett and Evans took the most shots from that range on the team and hit at the best percentage. They are not great three-point shooters. Since they aren't great from the outside, but do very well driving the lane, they need to still be able to shoot jump shots to keep the defenders from lagging off. Shooting, and hitting, mid-range jumpers works well in this respect.

Considering that we know how well players shot from mid-range now, how does that compare with close-range:

Jett 76 - 112 .679

Evans 127 - 187 .679

Ellis 27 - 51 .529

Loe 45 - 73 .616

Mitchell 44 - 85 .518

McCall 45 - 97 .464

Barnett 16 - 29 .552

Remekun 48 - 68 .706

Glaze 33 - 59 .559

Manning 8 - 10 .800

Perhaps one can say that because Evans and Jett take a decent number of mid-range shots, and make a fair percentage of them, that it helps to open them up for more drives in the lane. Both of their percentages in close are extremely good.

[sonoma bob]

Another factor is how open is the shot. I remember seeing DE kill teams with a sweet little wide open 6 to 12 foot shot. It takes good judgement of when to shoot and the confidence if you are open it is your duty to shoot.

[ACE]

Over in the "St. Louis Area Players" thread, kshoe asked the question about stats on how our other players shot the two-point shot vis-a-vis JJ's shooting. roy then brought into play the Pitino philosphy that if you can't dunk, shoot a three making the two-point shot the worst value shot of the game. It was/is an interesting juxtaposition, to say the least.

So I went back and did each play-by-play for the 2012-13 season as laid out over on ESPN. I did not count dunks, tip-ins, lay-ups or three-point shots (as was the case when I tallied JJ all season) and did the comparison. (Disclaimer: old eyes may have missed a few things but not so much to be a major difference if you ask me):

Name FGA FGM PCT

Jett 63 25 .397

Evans 105 38 .362

Ellis 55 8 .145

Manning 25 8 .320

McCall 45 13 .289

Loe 33 9 .273

Remekun 33 11 .333

Barnett 5 0 .000

Mitchell 32 11 .344

Glaze 14 4 .286

Some interesting stuff here. JJ took the second-most amount of mid-range jumpers on the year, almost getting lapped by Evans. But short of Evans, nopody made more. And JJ's attempts were even double th eattempts by Ellis, McCall and Mitchell each --- somethign I di dnot expect seeing as, in my mind, these were our "shooters." But our shooters bomb from deep, not in the middle. I was surprised by Mitchell's lack of numbers, but when you compare his 32 jumpers against his taking 92 treys, Mitchell favored the three-point shot over the two-point shot by a 3-to-1 margin, again ignoring the "close-in" shots. And he was hurt to begin the season. If my numbers are correct, and you back out 124 of Evans' 311 total shots on the season, that means a little over 60% of Evans' shots are dunks, lay-ups and tip ins. That seems incredible even without anything to compare it to. Beast mode? I'll say.

Odds and ends: Manning made just as many shots from 2 as Ellis did. Ellis' shot 14.5% from two, but 33% from three. The two guys I would seem to WANT to take the two ... Ellis and McCall .... have the two lowest shooting percentages for such a shot in last year's lineup. Barnett was the epitome of Pitino's philosophy altered only so slightly --- he made either a lay-up or a three --- nothing inbetween.

Which I think pretty much sums up our overall offensive philosphy.

Excellent research and nice job proving JJ is a very effective mid-range shooter! Evans seemed to really struggle with the mid-range shot early, but came on strong late in the year.

[GOSLU68]

Ellis had an odd year I would like to see a comparison first semester vs second. Down the stretch he had to be hurt as he could not buy a basket. Love the kid but we could have gone all the way if he had been hot instead he was not.

[Taj79]

I have to admit I looked at JJ with a jaundiced eye -- likely because his shot is so unpure, if you will. If you say Jett was the "best mid-range shooter" on the team as jbizz did, there can be no real argument based on the percentages. I'm on board.

@ACE --- the stats prove out your DE improvement point as well. I am going to offer that as DE got more comfortable and the role became more definite, he settled into it quite well.

@GOSLU68 -- no. You'd be surprised. Ellis started the year missing his first 13 mid-range jumpers (just noted as "jumper" on the ESPN play-by-play). Then, when he made his first, he missed his next 8 before hitting the second one. Then missing something like 6 more before hitting a third. Which makes him 3-for-27 in the beginning. He finishes out then on a 5-for-28 run. Little to no difference. To me, bottom line: Cody's game was NOT in the mid-range, hje was strictly a three-point arc bomber. I think he was quite limited in hindsight -- catch-n-shoot or nothing. In this regard, my belief in himor McCall taking the last shot was completely misplaced -- unless it was indeed a three. Over the course of 35 games, Ellis averaged less than 2 mid-range shots a game --- so he could take almost a month off in some instances between hitting his jumpers. Heck, making 8 over 36 games means he hit one every FOUR games. Yikes! I don't know that he was hurt -- maybe tired. The first thing to go when tired are the legs and the legs control the shot. I also think most teams figure out who you are later in the year and based on these stats, knew Cody was the bomber and little more.

[RUBillsFan]

@GOSLU68 -- no. You'd be surprised. Ellis started the year missing his first 13 mid-range jumpers (just noted as "jumper" on the ESPN play-by-play). Then, when he made his first, he missed his next 8 before hitting the second one. Then missing something like 6 more before hitting a third. Which makes him 3-for-27 in the beginning. He finishes out then on a 5-for-28 run. Little to no difference. To me, bottom line: Cody's game was NOT in the mid-range, hje was strictly a three-point arc bomber. I think he was quite limited in hindsight -- catch-n-shoot or nothing. In this regard, my belief in himor McCall taking the last shot was completely misplaced -- unless it was indeed a three. Over the course of 35 games, Ellis averaged less than 2 mid-range shots a game --- so he could take almost a month off in some instances between hitting his jumpers. Heck, making 8 over 36 games means he hit one every FOUR games. Yikes! I don't know that he was hurt -- maybe tired. The first thing to go when tired are the legs and the legs control the shot. I also think most teams figure out who you are later in the year and based on these stats, knew Cody was the bomber and little more.

Ellis value to the team is sort of enigmatic. Based on his shooting and offensive numbers, you could probably make an argument that he actually hurt the Bills offensively because of how inefficient he was. He shot 33% from the floor and the same from 3pt range, he only had 33 assists, and wasn't an really offensive rebounder. Aside from being a decent (but not great) 3 pt shooter, his best best offensive qualities were not turning the ball over and his stellar FT shooting. On defense, he didn't seem like an elite defender because of a lack of athleticism. He didn't block a bunch of shots or anything in the post and wasn't a great rebounder. However, he did have a good number of steals and obviously took a ton of charges which do not show up in the box score.

His overall numbers seem kind of poor when you break them down, but I think he did enough "little things" well/great to contribute overall. It is hard to argue that he wasn't valuable given the success the team had.

[JettFlight5]

Dwayne's jumper looked pretty good down the stretch.

Sim Bhullar had fun trying to defend it.

[majerus mojo]

awesome stats, thanks for posting. DE, JJ, and MM are going to be lethal this year.

[Cowboy]

^{-great stuff in this thread}

^{-just think what the make% of our guards would have been if they made more of those layups, I wonder how this compares to guards on other teams?}

^{-very surprised at CE's shooting stats}

[Taj79]

Final thought: stats are great but not the stand-alone indicator. No one can dispute how vital CE was to this team, mid-range percentage not included. Stats don't measure heart, intangibles, or charge-taking in terms of momentum shifts. CE sealed a lot of victories on the line down the stretch as well. It's a team game and every team member has the same strengths.

As 2013-14 plays out, and we find ourselves in a tight ball game, down one or two, I want the ball in JJ's hands. He can drive and finish or drive and dish. He has also shown that as the season wears on, his FT shooting gets really better. If his man plays off him by a few feet, that too sets him up for a more uncontested jumper, which he has shown the knack to hit. All good as far as I'm concerned.

Based on these stat s using 30 games played as an easy number, JJ average about 2 jumpers per game. Evans 3.5. Ellis almost 2. McCall 1.5. The rest maybe around 1. PER GAME. We disdain taking this shot, for all intents and purposes. To me, that is the most telling thing about these stats.