Three-point shooting has been a popular topic throughout Mike Woodson’s tenure as head coach at Indiana.
And it generally hasn’t been a pleasant conversation.
Whether they aren’t shooting enough threes, aren’t making enough, or often both, the “three ball” generally hasn’t been a friend of the Hoosiers for nearly a decade.
Although the roster looks much different, Sunday afternoon’s exhibition at Tennessee did little to allay concerns about Indiana’s ability to knock down shots from long range. Especially the first half, when the Hoosiers went an alarming 0-for-11 from deep.
Things did improve after the break, when IU made 4-of-8 from three. But coach Mike Woodson says neither Sunday’s 21.1% make rate, or the 19 attempts from three looked anything like what the program has been charting during their internal scrimmages.
“In all of our scrimmages that we’ve charted, we’ve shot the three ball well,” Woodson told Don Fischer on his radio show Monday evening. “We’ve been putting up 27 to 30 threes (per scrimmage) and we’ve been shooting 37%.”
Tennessee had something to do with Indiana’s uninspiring effort from beyond the arc.
The Volunteers were 34th nationally in three-point shooting percentage defense last season, and No. 1 overall the year before that. Led by last year’s SEC Defensive Player of the Year Zakai Zeigler, Tennessee was formidable guarding the perimeter against the Hoosiers.
So after one exhibition it’s hard to know whether Indiana will really end up hoisting 27 to 30 threes a game. Even the low end of that spectrum at 27 would have ranked No. 19 nationally in attempted threes per game a season ago.
Indiana has been nowhere near that kind of three-point volume. So a move to 27 to 30 threes a game would represent a dramatic sea change in playing style under Woodson. It would be nearly double the attempts compared to the two last seasons. In each of the last two years, Indiana shot 15.5 threes per game. In all three of Mike Woodson’s seasons at IU, his teams have finished outside the top-300 nationally in 3-pointers attempted.
INSIDE THE NUMBERS
Here are Indiana’s 3-point shooting numbers going back to the 2015-16 season. That was their last Big Ten championship team, and they haven’t had a better season shooting threes, or more attempts per game since.
Spanning both the Woodson and Archie Miller eras, only once in the last seven years has Indiana ranked inside the national top-200 in 3-point percentage (2022-23), and not even once have they been inside the national top-250 in 3-point attempt rate (i.e. 3-point attempts / total FGA).
- 2015-16: 41.5% on 23.7 attempts per game
- 2016-17: 38.0% on 22.8 attempts per game
- 2017-18: 32.2% on 19.4 attempts per game
- 2018-19: 31.2% on 19.3 attempts per game
- 2019-20: 32.6% on 16.9 attempts per game
- 2020-21: 32.1% on 18.1 attempts per game
- 2021-22: 33.3% on 17.7 attempts per game
- 2022-23: 36.8% on 15.5 attempts per game
- 2023-24: 32.4% on 15.5 attempts per game
If Indiana is going to start shooting a lot more threes, they’ll need enough players on the floor they trust to make them on high volume.
Ranked by career attempts, here are the players expected to attempt threes this season for IU:
- Trey Galloway (30.1% on 226 attempts)
- Luke Goode (38.8% on 219 attempts)
- Mackenzie Mgbako (32.7% on 153 attempts)
- Myles Rice (27.5% on 131 attempts)
- Kanaan Carlyle (32% on 100 attempts)
- Anthony Leal (35.2% on 71 attempts)
- Langdon Hatton (34% on 53 attempts)
- Malik Reneau (32.1% on 53 attempts)
- Gabe Cupps (35.9% on 39 attempts)
- Jakai Newton (no attempts)
- Bryson Tucker (no attempts)
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