2024 Regular Reason Review

The Pilots played 31 games in 2023-24.  Robertson, Austin, Gorosito played in all 31.  Masic played in 30. Dengdit played in 29. Vucinic played in 27.  Harris played in 22. Other players who averaged more than 10 mins per game when they played all played in 10 to 12 games (Koroma, Yuto, Jordan, Oosterbroek).  Pilots finished the season with 6 scholarship players plus one walk-on (Lemke).  

The season began with a win over Long Beach St.  LBSU is 18-12. 4th in the Big West.
The next D1 game was a win over UC Riverside, who is currently 13-17 and 7th in the Big West.
Then there was a ten point loss to Tenn. St, currently 17-14 and 5th in the OVC.  
First road game was a 25 point beatdown from Nevada, currently 24-6, 3rd in MWC and #40 NET.
Then a one point loss at PSU, who is 16-14, 6th in the Big Sky.  That's one that got away, losing on a last second layup.
Next was a win against Wyoming, currently 13-16, 8th in MWC.
Then a 22 point home loss to Air Force, currently 9-19 and 10th in MWC.  This one is hard to explain.
A road loss at N. Dakota St., currently 15-16, 5th in Summit.
A road win at N. Dakota, 18-13 and 2nd in Summit.  A decent win.
A 28 point beatdown from Grand Canyon, 26-4, 1st in WAC, #55 NET.
Loss at Hawai'i, 17-13, 5th in Big West.  This was first game after Koroma left the team.
Next day was a loss to UMass, 19-10, 5th in A-10.
2 days later a one point loss to Temple, 11-18, 13th in American.  Led much of 2nd half, lost in the final minutes.

This was the preseason results. 4-9 against D-1 teams.  Two one point losses.  Two beatdowns from good teams.  Best wins were LBSU at home, UND on the road.  Worst loss was Air Force at home.  The ThanksgivingChristmas tourney in Hawai'i was a mess in more than one way.  A more mature team with less transfer player drama might have been able to reverse that to 9-4.

I looked at one statistic over the season, 3P shooting %.  My stats classes were a long time ago.  

The team averaged 34.7% on all 3P shots (292-842).  44.5% of all shots were taken from 3P range.  The per game performance variance ranged from 15.0% (SMC 2/10/24) to 55.2% (PU 2/3/24), with a mean of 34.4%.  They had just as many poor 3P games as they had good 3P games.

On 2P only shots they made 50.9%.  Using the 1.5 multiplier, the effective 3P shooting percentage was 52.0%, so shooting 3P shots was slightly more effective than 2P shots (52.0% vs. 50.9%) for the season, but the margin for error was small.  If the team shot 3Ps below average, the 3P shots were less effective than 2P shots, and half of the games the team shot below average.  There were 10 games the 3P average was less than 30%, and the record was 1-9 in those games.  The 11 games with the best 3P average were all 40.0% or better, and the record was 4-7.  Obviously shooting well did not mean a win; for example two of the best games were at SCU (14-28) and Nevada (12-27) with the team scoring 86 and 83 points, but the defense gave up over 100 points, leading to losses.  3P shooting is only a part of the solution to get better.

Conclusion, consistency has to be improved.  The Pilots were 7th in the WCC in 3P%, but the best was LMU at 36.8%, only 2 percentage points better.  Taking the five worst games of the Pilots where they shot 25% or less on 3Ps would put the Pilots at the top of the table in league in that category.

The Pilots took the most 3P attempts per game (25.5) of WCC teams, and made the most 3P shots per game (8.8 ).  For the most part, the players making the better percentages are taking most of the shots.  I only found one player taking a significant number of shots with a poor average.  It is obviously a weapon that Coach Legans intends to use.  The four best teams in the league all shot 35.4% or 35.5% on 3P shots, less than 1 point better than the Pilots.  But they all have much better overall shooting percentages, meaning they were much better on their 2P shooting.  Among all the other areas the Pilots need to improve (2P shooting efficiency, rebounding, turnovers, defense, etc.), the 3P shooting consistency needs to improve to be a difference maker for UP.