Cold outside? For Pitino’s Lobos, not hitting 3s is nothing new

Nov. 6—Don’t tell Richard Pitino his team can’t shoot.

At least not yet.

The fourth-year Lobos coach is still a believer that this year’s team will be just fine from the outside despite the first three pieces to the puzzle — a closed scrimmage, an exhibition game and Monday’s 91-84 regular season win over Nicholls State — showing the contrary.

“I think it’s a little early to say that,” Pitino said Monday when a reporter’s question about his team attempting 36 3-pointers against Nicholls was prefaced with a suggestion that the roster’s weakness is outside shooting.

“I think C.J. (Noland) and Mustapha (Amzil) — I’ll be surprised if they have a lot of 1-for-9s (as they each had Monday against Nicholls). Yes, we can’t shoot as many as we did.”

Maybe Monday was just a cold shooting night for all the Lobos not named Tru Washington; take away his 2-for-3 3-point shooting and the seven other Lobos who attempted a 3 hit only 15.2% of them.

Fully utilizing the 3-point line is prevalent in the modern game, but hasn’t been so for Pitino’s Lobos.

While UNM was outscored at the 3-point line by only one during last season’s 26-win campaign (233 made 3s to 234 for opponents), that figure being so close had more to do with a handful of Lobo blowout victories and the fact that they were one of the nation’s best 3-point defensive teams, ranking 22nd out of 362 Division I teams in opponent’s 3-point shooting percentage (30.7%).

The Lobos’ point distribution the last two seasons tells the story: UNM scores on 2-point shots (57.4% of UNM’s points came on 2-pointers last season, 18th highest in the country) and not on 3s (23.5% of UNM’s points came via 3-pointers, 333rd in the country).

In the 2022-23 season, those rankings were 24th in 2-point scoring distribution and 352nd for 3s.

With the midrange game of former Lobo Jamal Mashburn Jr., the lightning quick penetration ability of Jaelen House and inside presences the previous two seasons from Morris Udeze, J.T. Toppin and Nelly Junior Joseph,…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/cold-outside-pitinos-lobos-not-040100714.html

Author : Albuquerque Journal, N.M.

Publish date : 2024-11-07 04:01:00

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