If you've watching Michigan State basketball all season, you would know just how frustrating the poor 3-point shooting has been from the first game up until now.
The Spartans have some solid shooters on the roster from Jaden Akins to Jase Richardson to Tre Holloman even to Frankie Fidler, but none of them (outside of Richardson) have truly been consistent shooting the ball from beyond the arc this season.
Akins, a normally-solid 3-point shooter, has seen his percentage go from 36 percent last year to 28 percent this season. Holloman was at 43 percent last season and now he's at 33 percent. Fidler was shooting 36 percent a season ago with Omaha and now he's shooting a shocking 18 percent. And even Xavier Booker was a semi-sharpshooter as a freshman, making about 33 percent of his threes but as a sophomore, he's hitting just 23 percent.
The fall-off in 3-point shooting with all of these guys this season needs to be studied. But fortunately, it hasn't hurt the Spartans in many games and they're 22-5 and sitting in first place in the Big Ten.
But all of these guys have seen increases in free throw shooting percentages. That makes Michigan State one of the top five free throw shooting teams in the country.
The difference between the 3-point shooting percentage and free throw shooting has to be one of the largest in a long time, right?
Well, Anthony Garvert (@TheRealSharty on X) made a graph of all the teams over the past 15 years and the difference between free throw percentage and 3-point percentage and it's just what we suspected. Michigan State is an absolutely anomaly.
In fact, the Spartans have the greatest difference of any team in the past 15 years.
Felt bored so I made a normal distribution of the difference between FT% and 3P% for teams over the last 15 years. Lookie where MSU landed! 🙃
— Anthony 💩 (@TheRealSharty) February 24, 2025
(For some context, this is 3.5 standard deviations away from the mean. This is a statistical anomaly to end all statistical anomalies) pic.twitter.com/i5Yt5fAoUX
Just an unbelievable (yet somehow very believable if you've watched this team) statistic. No team has had a bigger difference in free throw and 3-point shooting in the past 15 years.
Who is the team with the smallest margin in that span? Middle Tennessee in 2016.
You're going to laugh...
— Anthony 💩 (@TheRealSharty) February 25, 2025
It's 2016 Middle Tennessee.
So there you have it. If Michigan State's elite free throw shooting and horrendous 3-point shooting make no sense to you, it's because, well, it doesn't make any sense. It's a statistical anomaly.