ACC Three-Point Shooting Problems

There may be a simple explanation. Maybe it’s a matter of playing style or coaching emphasis. Then, too, roster turnover has been robust. The 2025 season marked the end of Leonard Hamilton’s 23 years establishing the Florida State program’s place among ACC contenders before yielding to Luke Loucks. His former player was a large, versatile, and reliable — if unspectacular – FSU guard from 2008 to 2012. 

(In a way, playing in separate decades, Loucks and Justin Gainey at the league’s other State had similarly solid, subordinate oncourt profiles.) 

Maybe it’s the type of athletic players brought in to run Hamilton’s system, their offensive skills lacking a certain refinement, as a Clemson coach once confided in correlating his teams’ free throw deficiencies with the school’s recruiting limitations.

Maybe it’s preferred pace of play. Or perhaps it’s a function of the shooting background at the Tucker Center, Florida State’s home court, where a large portion of its games are played.

Whatever the explanation, if in fact there is a simple discernible explanation, Florida State’s lousy bonusphere bombing in 2026 was a continuation of its chronic recent difficulties from long distance. 

Last year’s .331 accuracy on threes, third-worst in the ACC behind (or below) Syracuse’s .329 marksmanship and BC’s .294, merely followed recent program tradition, not to mention Loucks’ career .325 struggles as a player. 

Through our collective Covid-19 catastrophe and on into the 2021 season, Hamilton’s squads made varying portions of their 3-point tries. They even led the ACC in 2021 with .376 accuracy as Coach Ham’s program receded from the highs of a school-best five 20-win seasons in a row. 

Over the last five seasons, though, FSU has been the only league squad that failed to hit threes at so much as a breakeven clip. (That’s a .333 rate for the mathematically challenged). 

Last season five Florida State players attempted an average of more than four triples per game. Chauncey Wiggins (.387), Robert McCray V (.355), and Martin Somerville (.337) made a respectable percentage of their tries. All are gone this season. McCray led Florida State in scoring with 16.3 points per game in 2026.

Tellingly, every one of FSU’s low-efficiency 3-point squads of the past half-decade were outshot from long-range by opponents. 

To be fair, Louisville was comparably inexact in 2024-25, Pat Kelsey’s debut season, which concluded with a 27-8 record and a second-place ACC finish. Those Cardinals showed perimeter improvement over the doldrums of Kenny Payne’s reign. Yet they failed to make a breakeven portion of nearly 29 long-range tries per game (.328) despite an impression they were bombing successfully from the perimeter. 

Last season’s Cards shot better but slid in the standings, hitting at a .360 clip on a league-high 1,127 bonusphere bombs. They finished fifth in 3-point accuracy, sixth in the standings, and at 24-11 made a second straight trip to the NCAAs. 

Now, how Louisville and Florida State adapt their 3-point shooting with much-altered rosters will say a lot about how well they elevate their oncourt fortunes.

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