Sun Devils Scorch Texas Tech on Three-Point Shots

I attended Saturday afternoon's Arizona State at Texas Tech men's basketball game. The Red Raiders are trying to rebuild with a young coach after a few down seasons and were looking for a win over a major-conference opponent. However, it was not to be, as the Sun Devils put on a three-point shooting exhibition, en route to a 77-62 victory. ASU shot 14-of-27 (.519) behind the arc for the game, but did particular damage in the first half.

I have charted the outcomes of ASU's 17 first-half three-point attempts, of which the Sun Devils made 10, from the play-by-play sheet . Each row represents a particular three-point attempt.

Successful Threes	Time Remaining	Missed Threes
Gilling	18:14	---
Felix	17:31	---
---	16:35	Gordon
Gordon	16:15	---
Gilling	15:59	---
Gilling	15:21	---
---	14:46	Gilling
Gordon	13:03	---
Gordon	12:50	---
---	11:55	Gilling
---	7:11	Carson
Gordon	5:09	---
Gilling	3:01	---
---	2:17	Felix
Gilling	1:20	---
---	0:12	Gilling
---	0:01	Gordon

HTML Tables

Forward Jonathan Gilling, a sophomore from Denmark, led the way for ASU, hitting 5-of-8 from downtown in the first half and 6-of-12 overall on the day. He came into Lubbock hitting only .358 on threes (24-of-67) for the season. Guard Evan Gordon added four treys in the first half, on six attempts; he went 4-of-7 on the day. He came in shooting .309  (21-of-68) this season from long distance.

In addition to the Sun Devils' high three-point accuracy rate, the way they produced flurries of treys was impressive. All told, as the chart shows, ASU made seven of its first nine three-point attempts. The first two made threes came less than a minute apart (with 18:14 and 17:31 remaining in the first half). A bit later came a torrent of three treys within less than a minute (between the 16:15 and 15:21 marks). A couple minutes later, Gordon hit a pair 13 seconds apart (13:03 and 12:50).