three point shooting

About last niiiiiiiight. Lights out for MSU:

Thanks to Michigan State for this fantastic content pic.twitter.com/56R2yAQqfX

— Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) January 29, 2021

The Spartans lost 67-37 to Rutgers last night, putting up their worst points per possession in the Kenpom era. Notable statistics:

• With more TOs than buckets, Michigan State suffered a basketball rutger against Rutgers!
• MSU turned the ball over on 32% of their possessions!
• Rutgers rebounded 43% of their misses!
• Rocket Watts is shooting 29/24 in Big Ten play!
• Rutgers had more blocked shots than FTAs allowed!
• It was Rutgers's best defensive performance in a conference game since 1982! Their opponent in that game was St Bonaventure!
• MSU is dead last in conference play in: 2P%, steals allowed, TO%, and offensive efficiency!
• There are 12 Big Ten teams in the top 100 of the NET rankings. MSU is not one!
• MSU has lost games in which their opponents shot 26%, 24%, and 13% from 3!

2021 bringing heat.

[After THE JUMP: Jeb! the AD]

It's a good time for another mailbag (read: content ideas are running low at the moment), starting with a big-picture question on the next big shift in basketball. I've got enough for a two-part mailbag, so if you're looking to get a question in, tweet it to me or email me.

Unpack The Courts

What's next in the evolution of basketball? 4 point line? 11 foot rims? Add 3 pounds to the ball?

— Koernelius, 3rd degree shut-in black belt (@DJKoerndawg) May 20, 2020

After reading Kirk Goldsberry's essential book, Sprawlball, on the evolution of shooting in the NBA and what the future may hold, I'm convinced the next major rules change will involve an attempt to deemphasize the three-point shot and bring the midrange/post game back into greater prominence. While I love today's pace-and-space era, particularly in comparison to '90s-style bully-ball, I sympathize with critics who'd like to see a significant swath of the court get utilized again.

Goldsberry suggests several potential rules changes that could fundamentally alter and modernize the game. One that's easy to implement and could have a significant impact is decreasing the size of the free throw lane. The reason that area is often referred to as the "key" is that it originally looked like one:

When George Mikan became too dominant on the interior, the NBA doubled the width of the paint to 12 feet, which is still the standard in the NCAA and high school. The NBA widened it even more, to 16 feet, in the 1960s in a successful attempt to prevent Wilt Chamberlain from averaging 50 points a game again. Shrink the lane back down to six or eight feet and suddenly post players have more prominence again because they can operate from closer to the hoop. This also opens up some space in the midrange area.

Goldsberry has a number of suggestions for altering the three-point line, including an idea that's picked up steam elsewhere: eliminating the corner three-pointer, which is now shorter in both the NBA and NCAA after the latter's move to the FIBA line last year. While the corner three has become a bit of a cheat code, particularly at the NBA level, I'm not a fan of getting rid of it.

Instead, I'd prefer a more drastic measure: widen the whole court. In the NBA and NCAA, the court is 94 feet by 50 feet, and that's been the case almost since basketball's inception, when the three-pointer didn't exist, nobody played above the rim, and being 6'8" made you a behemoth. (Mikan, the dominant force of the '50s, was 6'10".) The court wasn't designed with players of today's size and athleticism in mind; nobody could imagine how far the game would come from its set-shot origins.

You know how hockey in Olympic-sized rinks is way more fun than the smaller NHL standard? Basketball could get a similar jolt. Widening the court lets you move the three-point line back to a uniform distance. That makes all of those shots more difficult while eliminating the short corner and adding more space to operate inside the arc. Skilled shooters would still be able to launch threes, we'd see much less of centers and other marginal shooters chucking from long range, and players who could create off the dribble would gain more importance even if they weren't knockdown gunners.

That's a game I'd like to see. As basketball continues to become more three-or-layup-or-nothing, I expect we'll see major rule changes to get some offensive diversity back into the game.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the mailbag.]

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I wondered when someone would notice. There are a lot of games at night now. So many that it might be smart to…

Fox will have its best game of the day will be at noon every Saturday.

— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) May 13, 2019

…yeah, that. Michigan should feature frequently in that slot, and as a person who likes to get home and see the end of the 3:30 games and then the night games I'm all about that. If your priority is encompassing all the madness of a college football Saturday, noon is the slot for you.

Doing the math. Numbers from the new media rights deal:

Big Ten had nearly $759 million in revenue in FY18, new federal tax return shows. That's up from nearly $513 million last year. It's also $100 million more than amount SEC reported for FY18: https://t.co/Xs4icAPcAG

— Steve Berkowitz (@ByBerkowitz) May 15, 2019

That is 13.7 million per school. Michigan could pay every one of their approximately 700 scholarship athletes 20k a year based on this jump alone. If restricted to the ~100 players on the two main revenue sports that's 140k a year.

Nico Collins under the microscope. Combining Josh Gattis with this guy could be shades of Allen Robinson and Chris Godwin:

Hail Warinner. To go from last year to this is incredible.

Here are the highest-graded returning pass blockers along B1G interior offensive lineman. pic.twitter.com/zKK66BFfsU

— PFF College (@PFF_College) May 9, 2019

Find a tackle and Michigan's set to be a lethal passing attack.

[After THE JUMP: UCLA is incredible]