Texas Tech basketball: Scouting Georgetown transfer Mac McClung

His 3-point shooting needs to improve

I don’t know why McClung isn’t a better 3-point shooter.  He has a textbook shot which has allowed him to shoot over 45% from 2-point range in his career and over 80% from the free-throw line.  But it hasn’t translated to the deep ball.

My theory is that the problem is his shot selection.  When he starts to feel like he is in the zone, he often plays as if he is a character in the old 90s NBA Jam video game.  In that classic game, when a player hit a couple of shots in a row, the ball would start to turn to fire and the announcer would say “He’s heating up!”  Then, you would have to sit helplessly by as your friend that you were playing against just started draining 3s as soon as the hot player crossed mid-court.

That’s often how McClung plays offense when the adrenaline of a scoring run starts to impact his game.  That’s another dynamic that is going to be interesting when it meets the iron will of Chris Beard, who often preaches about taking “March and April shots”, which he also refers to as “championship shots”.

In both games, McClung took multiple deep and contested 3-pointers, and at times, he nailed them.  At other times, he missed woefully, including two airballs against Creighton.

Against the Orange, he took eight shots from downtown, making three.  Keep in mind that Syracuse plays a 2-3 zone on defense so 3-point looks are readily available when facing Jim Boeheim‘s team.  In the game with the Blue Jays, McClung shot just four times from beyond the arc, connecting only once.

For the year, he was just a 32.3% shooter from deep.  But that was a nice improvement over the 27.7% he shot as a freshman.  Interestingly, his attempts per game fell this year from 4.9 to 4.6.

Tech actually had three players attempt more 3s per game than that; Davide Moretti (5.6), Jahmi’us Ramsey (5.2), and Kyler Edwards (4.8%).  The difference is that all of them have at least one season as a 40% shooter from long-distance to their credit.  McClung hasn’t come close to sniffing that mark.

But the good news is that the form is there.  Unlike most players who need to improve in this area of the game, McClung has the technique down pat.  Now, he simply has to learn when to pull the trigger and when to keep his powder dry.