Barry Jacobs With Some Three Point Surprises

Much has been made this season of the uncharacteristic reliance by North Carolina on the 3-pointer as a key to its offensive production. Rightly so. Only three coaches over the past eight seasons have used the three to less scoring effect than UNC's Roy Williams.

That's even with 28 percent of the Tar Heels' points coming in 2013 from beyond the arc -- well above the conference average since 2006

A look at 3-point shooting since the ACC went to its current (and temporary) dozen teams reveals not only the norms within a program but across the span of the league.

To be sure, it's tough to conclude much about a single year of a coaching regime (Herb Sendek's last gasp in 2006 and James Johnson in a 2013 debut) or to draw definite conclusion about the current season before it's finished. Morever, as in UNC's case this year, personnel strengths and weaknesses have an impact on how much a coach embraces bonusphere bombing.

Nor do we need numbers to tell us that former coaches such as Maryland's Gary Williams or Virginia Tech's Seth Greenberg weren't big believers in long-distance dialing. Our eyes told us that much.

Given those predilections, it's interesting to note that a two-year Mark, N.C. State's Gottfried, runs an offense even more parsimonious from the perimeter than those of Greenberg and G. Williams.

Or that a second two-year Mark, Maryland's Turgeon, is only a shade more dependent on point production via 3-pointers than were Gary and Seth.

And while it's no surprise that BC's Steve Donahue relies heavily on threes as a part of his offense, as he did at Cornell, few might guess the same is true to a significant degree for Virginia's Tony Bennett, known as a shooter in college and the NBA.