I don't think that shooting better from downtown is our most important issue. To be an effective shooting team in general, we need solid post scoring. Biggest question is whether Sampson, Sanchez, Gift and Obekpa can score with the ball down low. If we can, it creates all different types of dribble penetration opportunities to open up our guys shot. D'Lo is a solid shooter, but he'd be a heck of a lot more consistent if he got some good looks. Rysheed is a solid outside shooter. Hooper and Bourgault can shoot. If we can suck defenses in a bit though, we'll be taking bad shots and in the same predicament.
You've been making the point since last year that improving our "post scoring" that it will somehow improve our three point shooting and its just not true. Actually its the exact opposite...by improving our three point shooting, our front line scoring will improve greatly.
Someone brought up Louisville as an example...you know the biggest reason why Louisville was so good? It wasn't because of Hancock and it wasn't because Deng had a variety of Olajuwon-like moves in the post. Its because they had 2 or 3 guys on the court- not just Hancock- who could shoot the three. When a defense has to cover that much more ground, it creates opportunities for the big fellas...not back to the basket "post moves", but dump offs from penetration or ball movement, alley oops, offensive rebounding opportunities. We had one guy who could shoot the three, Harrison, so the rest of the D would slough off in the paint and they'd lock down D Lo and dare the rest of the team to shoot. Obekpa could spend a year at big man camp...that's not going to help him if he's got three guys sitting on him in the zone and he cant get the ball in good position. (Although hopefully he's improved his hands o'stone). You add another shooter to the mix and either they cant sell out on DLo, or it opens things up in the paint.
Having a couple of guys who can knock down a three, combined with successful implementation of Whitesell's offense (a read and react, option based offense? Glory Hallelujah!) are the most important ingredients to this years success. Improved frontline scoring will be a nice secondary benefit if those things happen.