On New Year’s Eve, I had it pointed out to me that Ken Pomeroy, the proprietor of KenPom.com, the always helpful college basketball analytics website, had made a teeeeeeny tiny update to his website. Nothing major, no real changes, just a new addition.
Now, in addition to the Four Factors and the usual shooting percentages and block and steal rates, the site now lists Average Two-Point Attempt Distance for both offense and defense. In other worse, you can now see how good or bad your team is at getting shots as close to the rim as possible, or conversely, seeing how good or bad your team is at stopping opponents from shooting at the rim.
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Here’s Marquette’s scouting report column as of the afternoon of Friday, January 2nd, 2026.
I have what should be fantastic news for you, the attractive and intelligent Marquette fan that you are. The Golden Eagles are #2 in the country in Average Two-Point Attempt Distance on offense, with their average attempt inside the arc measured at 3.8 feet. Only Saint Louis is better, with Josh Schertz’s Billikens coming in at 3.7 feet. Marquette is one of just three teams to average less than four feet, and one of just 42 teams to average less than five feet.
In other words: Shaka Smart and Nevada Smith are elite at coaching their team into executing attempts as close to the rim as humanly possible. The data is relatively new, so we’ll see how things go as the season goes along, but the early returns suggest that you really can’t do much better than what Marquette is doing at getting great shots that you can easily make.
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And there’s the problem. “Wait a minute, Andy! Almost no one is better than Marquette at shooting close to the rim? Why are the Golden Eagles 5-9 overall and 0-3 in the Big East and riding a five game losing streak for the first time since 2014-15??” Fantastic questions all around.
There are, of course, multiple reasons for that. You could point to MU not being particularly great on defense, especially being kind of bad at stopping shots from going in. You could point to the Golden Eagles being kind of terrible at defensive rebounding.
But specifically: Why is Marquette bad this year when they’re effectively the best team in the country at shooting point blank shots?
Because they can’t make those shots.
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Look at the picture again. Marquette is shooting 48.3% on those two point attempts from less than four feet away from the rim. That ranks #286 in the country. They’re a long way off from being mediocre at shooting those shots, as the exact midpoint of the country, #182 and #183, come in at 51.6%. They’re a long way off from being what we could call good, as the top 100 starts at 54.8% and better.
If we throw the Big East conference play only toggle on the site, Marquette is the best team in the Big East at getting to the rim at this point of the league schedule, averaging 4.0 feet on their two-point attempts.
They’re also shooting 43% on those attempts, which is #9 in the Big East. Only Seton Hall (41.8%) and Villanova (38.6%) are worse on two-pointers, and those teams are #7 and #5 in average distance respectively. They’re shooting from a little further away than Marquette, so their shots are a little harder. I’m sure that Shaheen Holloway and Kevin Willard would like me to say that the distance doesn’t excuse their terrible shooting percentages, and so I will, merely to point out that their average distances make Marquette’s poor shooting look even worse.
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Sean Jones is shooting 33% on twos in Big East play.
Caedin Hamilton is shooting 27%.
Chase Ross is shooting 25%….. on 9.3 attempts per game.
Yeah.
Thanks for the helpful update, Ken. I mean that seriously. It is very helpful. It just makes me feel very sad about the state of affairs.
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