Quote Originally Posted by throatybeard View Post
This seems fairly silly because it ignores two things.

1) Twos are also the lottery. There's this idea that threes are somehow a wildly bigger gamble than shooting twos, which most college teams don't exceed much more than 50% on. It's not like you have a 90% chance of making a two versus high 30s% on a good three-point shooting team.

2) It ignores that the bonus point means that you only need to hit 33.3% on threes to equal the equivalent 50% shooting percentage on twos. So shooting 38 or 39% from three is actually better than shooting 50% from two. Less "lotteryish," as it were.

I agree that our fortunes in March will depend on whether we make shots or not.

Just because people mimic the "live by the three, die by the three" meme as if it were a litany, it doesn't mean that open threes are some risky roll of the dice.
Thought-provoking take on the subject, Throatybeard. I hadn't really thought of your line of reasoning; probably because I have allowed myself to be influenced by constantly hearing the comment 'live by the three, die by the three'. However, I think what is perhaps a better way to play than hoping you can shoot 38 or 39% from three is to have a strong inside game, which should allow a team to shoot above 50% on two-point shots. I'd rather have a team approach that emphasizes scoring on the inside while mainly using the three-pointer as an added bonus. This is the way Carolina would like to play, but the fact that Pigeon would rather shoot jumpers than try to score on the inside hurts them, I think.