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Stat of the Week: Oklahoma State on Near-Record Pace for 3-Point Attempts

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Mike Boynton has insisted all season that his Oklahoma State basketball team is good at shooting 3-pointers. We now have 24 games worth of data that tells us otherwise.

OSU is currently No. 251 in the country in 3-point shooting percentage, although it is No. 7 in Big 12-only games in the same statistic. I don’t know that this can be considered a “good” 3-point shooting team, and I’m not even sure it can be considered average.

And yet ….

OSU continues to take 3-pointers at an all-time pace. The record for 3-pointers per game by a team (from what I could find scouring the OSU media guide, which is not exhaustive in its record of 3-pointers made) came in 2009 when the Pokes took 851 (!), or 24.3 a game. This year, depending on how many postseason (?) games they get in, they could break that record.

Let’s presume they play nine more games this year. That’s seven league games, a Big 12 Tournament game and a NIT or NCAA game. They’d have to take 31 a game to break the all-time record of 851. If they somehow win one in the Big 12 Tournament then it becomes more feasible at 28 a game. Regardless, they’re tracking with some of the all-time gunner squads (all over the last decade, by the way — is this what we want basketball to be?!).

Rank Year Att. Per Game
1 2009 851 24.3
2 2018 571 23.8
3 2010 784 23.8
4 2017 732 22.2
5 2008 708 21.5
6 2015 647 20.2

The foursome of Obi Muonelo, James Anderson, Keiton Page and Terrel Harris took an absurd 21.0 per game in 2010, which alone would be in the top 10 most ever taken per game by any Oklahoma State team. This year’s team has been led by Kendall Smith, Jeffrey Carroll, Thomas Dziagwa, Tavarius Shine and Lindy Waters — they average about 21 a game as well.

They’ve fallen off the all-time attempts pace in recent weeks, though. In their last 10 games, they have surpassed their current season average of 23.8 just three times. This is probably a good thing considering the fact that only Kendall Smith and Thomas Dziagwa convert on more than a third of their attempts.

Interestingly, OSU is 11-1 when they take more than 20 per game and hit at least 30 percent. That includes wins over Kansas, Florida State and OU. Where they’ve gotten into trouble — as one might expect — is when they’ve shot less than 30 percent in games. Regardless of how many they take, OSU is 2-6 in games where they shoot less than 30 percent.

So I don’t know where that leaves us. I guess take 20-25 good, open 3-pointers and pray you hit 35 or 40 percent of them. The data tells me they’re really good when that happens — most college teams probably are. The data also tells me that this might not be a sustainable long-term solution to OSU’s offensive struggles.

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