Defending The Three: Is It Important In College Hoops?

The three point shot can make or break games, but can it make or break entire seasons? NCAA Tournament seed numbers? Final Four appearances? This is the question we seek to answer today. A couple of days ago we hypothesized that teams with better two point field goal percentages– that is, the teams that score a better percentage of their points from two point field goals– seemed to have better success overall.

But as for a defensive strategy, is it important to guard the perimeter and keep your opponent from scoring off three point baskets? Check out the Ken Pomeroy stats at BasketballProspectus.com to see a breakdown of every college team and how well they guard against the three. Can you detect any patterns? We couldn’t. In fact, it seems just as likely that a good team will defend the three well as a bad team. Take the Big East, where teams like De Paul and Connecticut allowed a lot of threes, and Marquette and St. John’s didn’t allow many at all. Marquette and UConn were great all throughout the regular season, while DePaul and St. John’s struggled.

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