Breaking down last season by shot selection: Part 2

This is part 2 of my breakdown of UK's shot selection last season.  In part 1 I looked at the team as a whole as well as their opponents to see how each group performed at making various types of shots and concentrating specifically on different kinds of two point field goals.  In part I'm going to look at the three primary options on offense from last season - Meeks, Patterson, and Stevenson - and break down their shot selection in the same manner I did for the team.

Together Jodie, Patrick, and Perry accounted for 65.3% of the scoring last year (1742 of 2669 points) and took 60.1% of UK's field goal attempts (1164 of 1938).  The trio attempted 63.4% (865 of 1365) of UK's 2 pt FGA.  A large part of this came from Meeks and Patterson of course, but Stevenson did finish third on the team in shots attempted and field goals made by a pretty wide margin (Darius Miller was fourth, but well behind Perry).

Below is a shot summary for each player using the same categories and format for Part 1 with the exception of tip-ins which I combined with layups (there were not very many for any player).  The data was compiled from the same sources as in Part 1.

Despite my best attempt at accuracy, there are a few discrepancies.  At some point (or various points) I missed 11 of Jodie's shots and 4 of Patterson's.  Stevenson is correct though and I'm not going to sweat the ones I missed since we're only talking about 1% of each players' total attempts.

A couple of things to note:

• Despite taking twice as many shots, Patterson only had 1 more dunk than Stevenson.
• Patterson took more shots around the basket, but Jodie got to the free throw line 100 more times.
• Patrick needs to change some of those layups into dunks.

Here are the shooting percentages for each player on each kind of shot.  I ended Part 1 by asking who everyone thought was the best 2 pt jump shooter among these three players.  Here's the answer.

And the winner is: Patrick Patterson!  Most people guessed this correctly and Patterson was not only the best of the three, but was above average at shooting the jumper within the arc.

• The shocking thing here, at least for me, is how poor Jodie was on his non-three point jump shots.  There is a full 7 point difference in his percentages from behind the arc and in front of it - it astonishes me that someone who is such a good shooter would do so poorly on these shots.  If there is one element that Jodie really needs to work on it's his midrange game.
• If Jodie had made his two point jump shots at the same rate as he made his three point jump shots, he would have scored an additional 17 points.
• As for Perry, his non-dunk percentages don't look so good, but consider that if he had hit just 2 more jump shots he would have been basically average. 
• Perry needs to work on finishing around the rim when he can't get a dunk.  He didn't attempt many layups which is good, but someone with his length should be able to finish closer to 60% on those shots.
• As I  mentioned above, Patterson needs to redistribute his shot selection to get more dunks and fewer layups.  He's good at converting both, but 96.4% >> 72.8%.  Consider that if Patrick had taken 25% of his layups and tried to dunk them instead, he would have scored about 20 more points during the season.
• If Patterson's shot distribution around the rim was more like Perry's (54.5% dunk attempts, 45.5% layup attempts) he would have scored an additional 29 points, raising his per game average by almost a full point.

There you go.  I hope you found this as interesting as I did.  I still have a lot of quetions about how the average D1 player performs this way, but I think it's going to be a while before someone makes that kind of information publicly available.  It would certainly make analyzing player performance more sophisticated and thus more accurate.