When Providence secured a commitment from Noah Locke (a 6’3 shooter who spent three years at Florida before playing at Louisville last season) the signing was met with overwhelming positivity due to his track record against good competition combined with his shooting numbers from beyond the arc.
The Friars lost two of their better perimeter shooters in AJ Reeves and Noah Horchler to graduation last spring, while Al Durham’s outside shooting numbers were hampered by a lingering injury for the better part of the season until he started to get right again in March.
Locke is expected to see big minutes on a team with questions marks from beyond the arc beyond point guard Jared Bynum, and it will be interesting to see how Providence gets Locke his looks.
Quite often, we look at shooting percentages from beyond the 3-point line and draw a direct corollary, assuming the numbers will carry over or improve, but not all systems are created equal and not all shots from long range are manufactured the same way.
For instance, last season Reeves shot 37.3% from deep, with a ton of his jump shots coming off screens. Eighty-two of Reeves’ possessions last season came off screens, and he put up 1.085 points per possession in those opportunities. That was good for the 72nd percentile in the country.
Locke’s shooting numbers were down for a Louisville team that was a mess last year. Head coach Chris Mack was fired during the season, and Locke’s 3-point shooting dipped to 34% (he shot over 40% from 3 his last two years at Florida, and 37% as a freshman).
The main difference between Locke and Reeves is that Locke shot far less frequently off of screens in his career. As mentioned above, Reeves had 82 possessions off screens in 2021-22, and that was after missing a few weeks with a fractured finger (28% of his possessions came off of screens last year).
In Locke’s last season at Florida he had just 13 possessions off screens, per Synergy Sports. He shot 6-11 and finished with a terrific 1.385 points per possession in a limited sample size.
Locke’s sophomore year saw him end up with 26 possessions off screens, while as a freshman he had 39. He finished in the 89th percentile as a sophomore and 48th as a freshman.
In other words, Locke had fewer attempts off screens in three combined seasons at Florida than Reeves did a year ago in an injury-shorted season at PC.