No Threes!

The strategy that won UConn a championship.

Welcome back to another edition of The Starting Five. To read last week’s version, you can click/tap here.

And that’s a wrap on the 2023-24 season.

Just like last year, the season ended with the UConn Huskies on top. Dan Hurley’s team pulled away from Purdue in the second half — ultimately winning the game by double digits (again).

The title game was full of extreme statistical results. A few of my favorites:

• Purdue shot just seven three-point attempts — the fewest in a title game since 1995. Overall, 13% of Purdue shot attempts were from behind the arc. That’s the lowest three-point attempt rate in a game for the Boilermakers since 2015.

• Zach Edey scored seven baskets on post-ups with Donovan Clingan as the defender. Clingan had allowed just five baskets on post-ups all season. (Hat tip to Isaac Trotter for pointing this out in-game)

• UConn rebounded 42% of their missed shots — the highest offensive rebounding rate for a Purdue opponent in Edey’s entire career.

In today’s newsletter, we recap the championship game by looking at the strategy that led to those first two bullet points above.

How UConn completely took away Purdue’s three-point shooting and forced Edey to play one-on-one. And if the Boilermakers should have changed up their own strategy in response.