If you can shoot you can shoot, if you can't then you can't.
Posted via VolNation Mobile
I disagree.
Obviously there are some folks with natural hand-eye coordination and depth perception who can throw it up there backwards and blindfolded and they hit everything (Lofton).
And obviously there are some folks who are spazzoids who will never be able to shoot.
But most college athletes are in the middle.
Take a guy like Tatum. Against Georgetown his freshman year, he went 5-6 (83%) from the 3-piont arc, and might have been our MVP of that game. Later he went 5-10 against Gonzaga from the arc (in Knoxville), and in the first half in particular he seemingly couldn't miss.
But for the year, he only shot 32%. What gives?
Probably mechanics. He's got good hands and eyes, and when he's on, he can really shoot. But if there's a mechanical hitch, it can really throw you off to the point that some nights you can't find anything. And then you start overthinking, and you don't trust your hands and eyes anymore, and it gets worse.
That can be fixed. Get the mechanics sorted out in the offseason, and then cement the correct mechanics with repetition until it feels natural again, and then you (a) you can start trusting your hands and eyes again, and (b) you get a more consistent shot.
Cam's percentage jumped from 32% his freshman year to 39% last year.
I think McBee is a similar case. He shot 31% last year, and then in the Summer when he took the basketball trip to China, he shot nearly 50% from the arc.
As regards Ware, there's no way to tell by looking at HS stats whether he's a bad shooter, or whether he's potentially a good shooter who needs polish. Safe to say he's somewhere between Lofton and Wingate, and exactly WHERE between them we might not know until roughly his soph year.
