If you are into stats about college basketball, it is well worth subscribing to his newletter. Here is an excerpt from his most recent one:
"Enjoy your hot starts (or dread your cold ones) while they last
I think that more invested fans are at least a bit more conditioned these days to brace against shot variance in a single game. Statistically, we know that uber-hot or uber-cold starts will generally fade back to the mean, and games that don’t are considered outliers. This is not something people really enjoy believing in, because it goes against a bunch of sportswriter-y narratives people love, but I think attitudes have shifted a bit in recent years towards accepting this as part of the game. On certain nights, it is or isn’t your night.
What I don’t think has happened yet is the conditioning for bracing against shot variance over the course of a full month. Sometimes, over the course of half a season.
Over the last five full seasons (excluding 2020-21), a total of 67 teams have outshot their opponents from three by 10% or greater over the course of the first five weeks of the season. Generally, the teams involved have played anywhere from 7-10 games, so we think we know a lot about them. Maybe! But of those 67 teams, would you like to guess how many continued to outshoot opponents by 10% or more from three?
Well, the answer is two. Two teams, in the last five seasons, have managed to sustain their uber-hot starts from November/early December through March. Those are 3% odds that any of the seventeen teams to do it so far this year will continue to finish out these scalding starts.
Considering the average output of these teams the rest of the way is a +1.2% 3PT% delta, you could see certain teams’ fortunes begin to take a serious step downward.
So! If you’re a fan of Bradley, Ohio State, North Dakota State, Rhode Island, Liberty, Coastal Carolina, Houston, DePaul, Montana State, Butler, Cincinnati, Northern Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee, Murray State, Purdue, or Colorado, you have likely seen the best of your season so far, in terms of three-point differential. For instance, I think I am safe in doubting that Bradley will keep up an absurd +18.5% differential from deep when the greatest full-season differential of the last three seasons is +8.9%.
On the other hand, if you’re a fan of UMass, Stony Brook, San Diego, Northern Illinois, Coppin State, Jackson State, Penn, Portland State, Oakland, Ohio, Lindenwood, Northern Kentucky, Mississippi Valley State, Abilene Christian, or particularly poor Alabama A&M (-15.5%?!?), you’re due for good luck. Teams who’ve been outshot by 10% or more from deep since 2019 - 74 in total - have a 3PT% delta the rest of the way of -2.7%. Only two have sustained their uber-cold starts to finish sub-10%.
Here’s what this means: from mid-December onward, the in-game difference between the hottest teams of the first five weeks of a given season and the coldest, given 25 three-point attempts, is exactly one made shot. Three points. That’s it! Based on these first five weeks alone, you’d expect Bradley to make eight more threes in this sample than Alabama A&M, or a 24-point differential. On average: not the case.
The reason 3PT% differential, and by extension eFG%, matters most is because it statistically correlates with a drop or rise in overall performance at a rate almost double of any other stat. In fact, the closest to 3PT% is 2PT%, which means that most of a team’s rise or fall in performance is driven by making or missing shots. Who would’ve guessed that, in a game where points are measured by made shots, it would be meaningful to make shots?
The point is more that there’s a better way to measure who these 3PT% boons, and busts, will benefit. Given that schedule-adjusted TO% and OREB% are actually quite stable from the first month of the season to the last (I measured about 10-20% variance in an average season versus almost 50% for 3PT%), teams who are doing well in terms of producing positive turnover and offensive rebound margins can make up for lost 3PT% production by simply getting more shots. Teams that don’t do that thing could be in trouble.