I loved this piece from Sports Illustrated’s Luke Winn on the rising 3-point rate throughout college basketball. Winn’s article has a ton of good takeaways for coaches including insight into Buddy Hield’s work ethic, Bob McKillop’s “shooting licenses,” John Beilein’s shooting drills along with anecdotes of the mechanical tweaks OU’s staff made on the shooting strokes of their perimeter trio. For more information on the 2013 statistical study that swayed Jay Wright into this style of thinking, click here.
What’s most intriguing about this Sooners crew is that none of them were three-point threats when they arrived. All have undergone multiyear overhauls under the guidance of Kruger and assistants Henson, Chris Crutchfield and Lew Hill in what should be known as the Norman Shooting Laboratory. Cousins was a 25.0% long-range shooter as a freshman, before he had a complete mechanical makeover that changed him from a herky-jerky, overhead slinger into a fluid marksman (46.8%). After Woodard removed a hitch in his form this off-season, he was shifted from the point to put him in more natural shooting positions. He has jumped from 25.4% accuracy as a sophomore to 48.6% this year.
