ACC Bricklaying

Bad 3-point shooting as a group effort is nothing new. It may even be contagious. But lately, perhaps due to an expanded shooting arc, it’s become a chronic malady for some teams. Half of the ACC’s eight worst collective efforts from beyond the arc were registered in the past two years.

To recap, in 2019-20 the NCAA Division I men’s line moved back from 20’9”, adopted for the 2009 season, to a distance of 22’1.75” from a spot measured directly below the center of the basket. The line now matches the international arc.

Even with the lengthened arc no one has threatened the dubious 21^st-century record achieved by Georgia Tech under Brian Gregory in 2015, when the Yellow Jackets hit at a .267 clip and finished 12-19.

Pitt came within shouting distance of the Yellow Jackets’ mark in 2020, converting .2956 of its threes. But before the Panthers settled in as the ACC’s second-worst 3-point shooters of recent vintage, here came Miami in 2021 with slightly more execrable bonusphere accuracy at .2953.

The Hurricanes had only two regulars hit for better than a break-even percentage from 3-point distance in 2021 – standout Isaiah Wong (.347) and newcomer Matt Cross (.400). Wong is the No.2 returning scorer in the ACC with a 17.1-point average, trailing only Syracuse’s Buddy Boeheim (17.8). Cross is now gone.

The remainder of the Miami squad shot a combined .255 on threes.

North Carolina, under the shooting tutelage of then-assistant Hubert Davis, set a school mark in 2020 with .3042 team accuracy on threes, the program’s worst since the shot went into effect in 1987. That acuity improved to .318 in 2021 as the Heels went from a 14-19 record to 18-11.

Hurting the Carolina cause were the dud-ly duo of Caleb Love (.266) and Leaky Black (.222), both among the ACC’s worst from long range last year.