Texas Tech basketball: Scouting the Iowa State Cyclones

ISU doesn’t have the number of 3-point weapons that they have in the past

It’s become a hallmark of the ISU program to have 3-point snipers all over the court.  For years, their game plan has been to put as many shooters as possible on the floor, spread them out, and then try to penetrate and dish to the open man.

This year, they’d like to play that way with Haliburton but they don’t have the type of shooters that we’ve seen them deploy for so long.  In fact, they are in the bottom half of the league when it comes to 3-point shooting.

Hitting at just a 31.8% rate from deep, the sit 7th in the Big 12.  But that hasn’t stopped them from being rather liberal with their shots from deep as they have attempted 396 shots from behind the arc, third-most in the league.

A year ago, they were third in the conference in 3-point percentage at 36.3%.  They attempted 23.1 shots from distance per game whereas this year, they are attempting even more, 24.7 per game, despite shooting worse as a team.

In their last game against Baylor, they were just 6-23 from deep as they lost their third league contest.  Two games prior, they were just 8-28 in a loss to Kansas and in their Big 12-opening loss, they shot just 6-17 against TCU.

Of their eight players averaging the most minutes per game, none are shooting over 40% from 3-point range.  Haliburton is the best at 39.8% and he averages 2.3 makes per game.

The problem is that he doesn’t seem to have any teammates that are capable of helping him out from deep.  Penn State transfer Rashir Bolton is ISU’s second-leading scorer at 14.9 p.p.g. but he shoots only 31% from 3-point range.

It would seem like ISU would need to make their share of 3s Saturday to take down the Red Raiders but they aren’t all that equipped to do that.  Here’s hoping they don’t have one of those random hot shooting days that every college basketball team is likely to have during the course of each season.