3 pt shooting needs to improve
Knox is right. You increase the value of 3P attempts much more effectively by increasing the rate that you rebound the misses, than in the 3P rate itself.
The value of a 3 point attempt is always 3 * make% + inside the paint scoring * rebound%.
When the second part of that formula is way up, something very interesting happens: even mediocre perimeters have to be respected. (and inversely, from our perspective, have the "green light" and need to be willing to shoot if open; a shot volume approach)
We will never have a full roster of Darby+ perimeter shooting. What we
can do is have interior
rebounding up to a level that even the perimeter shooters
in the upper 20s of make% must be respected at any point in the shot clock, because an open 3 by them still has sufficiently good PPP to make it worth shooting. The second you accomplish that for all 5 players on the court, guess what the defense has to do? Spread their defense outward. And suddenly
so much interior play is liberated. The offense generates itself, the defensive is put in an impossible bind that can only be fixed by denying Tennessee their oRBs on missed 3s. (a missed shot, by the way, is always the more common result even for the good 3 point shooters: we miss more than we make. Increasing the value of the misses is an easy way to fix that primary issue with the 3)
And this is where Barker is such a fantastic get for us. She brings both sides of that formula up, if she gets back to 3P shooting at A&M levels. That's offensive
gold in Caldwell's system.
Oh. And she's pretty darn good on the defensive side of the ball.
