Villanova Basketball: What’s wrong with Wildcats after upset loss to Furman?

Poor three-point shooting

For starters, Villanova isn’t making threes at the same rate they did last year. A lot of their success over the past five seasons has been due to their propensity for taking and making shots from beyond the arc, and this staple of their offense is suddenly missing from their attack.

The Wildcats are still jacking them up from deep – 51.2 percent of their shot attempts come from three-point range, good for 10th in the nation – but are only making them at a 32 percent clip, which ranks just 217th in the country. Notice the disparity?

Now, part of this can largely be explained by the individual shooting ability of the players on the roster. Bridges, Spellman, Brunson, and DiVincenzo were Villanova’s four best three-point percentage shooters last year and were the only four that shot over 40 percent from deep.

This year, eight different players have shot at least nine threes and only three of them (Collin Gillespie, Saddiq Bey, and Joe Cremo) are shooting over 29 percent.

Not being able to make threes is a problem, and while the Wildcats have several players that can shoot from deep, it’s becoming clear they aren’t knockdown shooters. And they’re relying on that shot more than they ever have – last season’s three-point-happy team only shot 47.2 percent of their total shots from long-range.

An adjustment may be needed for Villanova to start attacking the basket more instead of becoming overly reliant on the three.