Illinois' shooting exploits eye-popping
In case Illinois fans didn't enjoy their school's 25-point win over Northwestern properly, Basketball Prospectus' John Gasaway offered some eye-popping perspective Monday.
Gasaway took Illinois' school-record 70.5 percent shooting from Thursday's game and added proportionate weight to the team's 9-for-14 effort on 3-pointers.
That gave the Illini an “effective field-goal percentage” of 80.7.
Then Gasaway computed the effective field-goal percentages for every major-conference league game since the start of the 2005-06 season.
The result? Illinois delivered the finest big-school shooting night in the last five-plus seasons.
As an added bonus? Illinois' 80.2 percent effective field-goal rate on Dec. 29 at Iowa ranked third on Gasaway's Top 10 list.
No other school made two appearances in the same season on his Top 10. That's absurd.
And to think, the 16th-ranked Illini (13-3, 3-0) are just one-sixth of the way through the Big Ten fray as they prepare for Tuesday's game at Penn State.
“People say, ‘How are you getting these open shots?'” said Illinois coach Bruce Weber. “You know, you have so many guys that are shooting well right now, you spread defenses. You've got to pick your poison. If we will pass the ball and get it to people and get it to the open man, you hope you continue to make those open ones.”
If that's the case, then what's next? An 85 percent effective rate? Or perhaps 90 percent?
After all, Demetri McCamey has made 9 of 11 3-pointers in Big Ten play. Bill Cole has hit 8 of 11. D.J. Richardson sits 7 of 12.
But Weber knows better. At some point, basketball gravity will pull his Illini back down amidst the mortals.
When he rewinds the calendar three weeks, he sees a 33 percent shooting effort in the UIC loss and a 39 percent showing in the Missouri loss.
“I still remember in the UIC game, I said to a couple guys during the game, ‘You've got to be patient and not shoot that quick 3,'” Weber said. “One of them said to me, ‘Well, I've been making it all year.' ‘Well, we're not making it today. That's why we've got to find other ways to score.' ”
Weber hopes when the inevitable cold spell arrives, the Illini show the patience to feed the ball inside.
“If we can play inside to outside … we're not going to shoot like we did, obviously, the other night all year,” Weber said. “But I think we can be a 38- to 40-percent 3-point-shooting team and hopefully around a 50-percent field-goal team.”