Nebraska Basketball: Analyzing what transfer Kobe King brings to the table

The Negatives

Despite this new pairing feeling like a match made in heaven, no pairing is made perfect; there are always some negatives. That remains true with King’s decision to take his talents to Nebraska.

A key necessity for Hoiberg’s pace-and-pace system to work best is efficient three-point shooting. Again, his offense entails a lot of pick-and-rolls and a lot of slashing; on top of a lot of kicking it out to open shooters and a lot of attacking close-out opportunities. This game plan essentially falls apart entirely though if the open shooters can’t make their shots.

Pace-and-space offenses force defenses to focus on two things: driving layups and 3-pointers. Without the 3-point shooting, defenses only have to worry about the driving layups inside; therefore everything falls apart and the offense suddenly flunks.

That has been a huge part of the problem during Hoiberg’s rather slow start with the Cornhuskers. Through their 7-20 stint, Nebraska has only made 32.4 percent of their 3-pointers, bad enough to rank them 216th in college basketball.

As explained above, this not ideal for Nebraska’s system. And considering one of their top shooters (Haanif Cheatham) will be leaving after this season, it would be ideal if King could help ease that potential offensive tension. Unfortunately, that will not be the case. King is a career 29.6 percent shooter from downtown; he was only making 25 percent of his shots from deep before leaving Wisconsin this season.

That’s not the most ideal 3-point shooting percentage to have when working within a pace-and-space offense, especially when the shooting is not there in the first place. It then begs the question, that while King certainly benefits from Nebraska’s scheme, does King need to work on his shooting mechanics to even further maximize his role within the system? King developing a jumper would make him Nebraska’s scariest weapon; he still might be that now, but a chunk of that relies on if the shooting around him improves.

Cornhusker fans should be walking away with this: while there may be some holes, Kobe King’s transfer is a great thing for the program, and he should have a positive impact the moment he steps on campus. King is a hard-working, joyful presence to have in the locker room; his seemingly solid fit with Hoiberg and the system is only a bonus.