Before Tony Bennett came west to help his dad, Dick, raise Washington State from the dregs of college basketball, he was a pretty fair shooter. In fact, no player in the history of Division I basketball has shot a better career 3-point percentage than Tony Bennett.
So who better to ask than a career .497 3-point marksman what he thinks of the NCAA moving back the 3-point line next season from 19 feet, 9 inches to 20 feet, 9 inches? And, typical of guards with no conscience, he’s not fretting over a foot.
“It won’t affect the guards,” said Bennett, who terrorized defenses from 1989-92 while at Wisconsin-Green Bay. “I think there’s some kids, some of your fringe players . . . sometimes it’s the bigger guys that toe the line and shoot the 3. You won’t see them shoot it as much.
“Because a foot is noticeably different.”
But not for true snipers, who could determine who advances and who goes home in the NCAA Tournament, which tips off today. The eight-team subregional at the Pepsi Center doesn’t have a team that sets up camp behind the arc.
None of the eight teams ranks higher than 30th in 3-pointers per game. Still, there are enough zone-busting guards here who view the 3-point line as their own personal threshold. You’d think a foot would be invading their personal space. Not to some of these guys.
“It really won’t matter,” said Temple junior Dionte Christmas, who led the Atlantic 10 in scoring at 20.2 points per game, including 104-of-274 3-pointers. “I don’t really shoot the 3 on the 3-point line anyway. I hit 100 of them, and at least 70 were at least two steps behind the line.”
Notre Dame is by far the most dangerous outside shooting team in the Denver field, with three players having made at least 50. Junior Kyle Mc-Alarney led the Big East with 3.32 treys a game and was second in accuracy (.448). He isn’t sending death threats to the rules committee, either.
“I don’t think it’s going to affect us at all, the way we shoot the ball,” he said. “We have a lot of great shooters on this team. For any good shooter, you’re really shooting on the move a lot. You’re shooting from a couple feet behind the line a lot of times.”
So why move it at all? It’s not like the 3-pointer has become the equivalent of golf’s 12-inch gimme. It was introduced to achieve more guard play. College basketball had become way too clogged in the middle and center oriented.
The national high-water accuracy mark came the first season the 19-9 distance was standardized in 1986-87. Then, from that .384 percentage, it never improved for 10 consecutive years, going down nine times.
Coaches nationwide howled about dwindling shooting fundamentals. Despite the extra point, players were more interesting in dunking their way onto “SportsCenter.” Since bottoming out at .341 in 1996-97, it slowly rose to .350 last season. The NCAA’s concern in moving the line back wasn’t so much the percentage of 3-pointers made as the percentage of 3-pointers taken and making the college game too outside oriented.
In the early years of the 3-point shot, about 29-to-30 percent of all shots taken were 3-pointers. In recent years it’s leveled off at about 35 percent.
“You don’t see a variety in terms of shots,” said Ed Bilik, secretary-editor and national interpreter of the Men’s Basketball Rules Committee. “It’s either penetration or can’t finish and kick out to a 3-point shot. You seldom see a halfway shot.”
True. Think about it. When is the last time you saw a college player and thought, “You know, that guy reminds me of Sam Cassell.”
“Or Rip Hamilton,” Christmas said of the Pistons star. “Every team we play it’s either a dunk or a 3-pointer.”
The beauty of the 3-point shot is an increase in those heart-stopping upsets that define the NCAA Tournament. Who complained about the line’s distance in 2005 when T.J. Sorrentine’s two three-pointers in the last 48 seconds of overtime lifted Vermont to a 60-57 upset of Syracuse? And this time every year you see the 1998 highlight of Valparaiso’s Bryce Drew nailing a 3-pointer to beat Ole Miss 70-69.
Who talks about the line? The coaches who get beat.
“In the NBA I think the risk and the reward are a little evened up,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. The NBA line is 23-9 at the top of the key and narrows slightly to the corners.
“You’re not going to shoot as good a percentage,” Izzo added. “But in the college game now I think there are too many gifts. People get back into too many games like that. I think it will spread some things out a little. When you lose a game like we did last weekend because a guy hit a couple 3-point and 4-point shots, I hope they move it outside the building.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
Today in Denver at the Pepsi Center
10:30 a.m. Michigan State vs. Temple
1 p.m. Pittsburgh vs. Oral Roberts
5:20 p.m. Washington State vs. Winthrop
7:50 p.m. Notre Dame vs. George Mason
On TV today
10 a.m. Kansas vs. Portland State, KCNC-4
12:30 p.m. Marquette vs. Kentucky, KCNC-4
3 p.m. Cornell vs. Stanford, CSTV
5 p.m. USC vs. Kansas State, KCNC-4
7:30 p.m. Notre Dame vs. George Mason, KCNC-4
