Michigan State basketball is officially the worst 3-point shooting team in CBB

“Siri, who is the worst 3-point shooting team in the country?”
“Michigan State basketball has the worst 3-point shooting in the country at 20 percent.”

Well, that’s depressing.

After hearing all about the shooters that Michigan State had from top to bottom on the roster this offseason, the Spartans have come out to make just 16 of their first 80 attempts from 3-point range. That means the Spartans are dead-last in college basketball in 3-point shooting percentage. That’s right, Michigan State’s 16-for-80 shooting from deep through the first four games of the year makes it dead-least out of 365 Division 1 teams in that category.

Woof.

The same sort of shooting woes transpired to begin the 2023-24 season, however, so there is some hope. But seeing guys like Jaden Akins, Xavier Booker, Frankie Fidler, and even Jaxon Kohler clank three after three off the rim at an alarming rate is cause for concern.

Michigan State made 3-for-18 to begin the season against Monmouth and then followed that up with a vastly improved 6-for-18 performance against Niagara in a blowout. The Spartans then slid back to a 3-for-24 shooting night against Kansas before most recently making just 4-of-20 against Bowling Green. And these struggles beg the question: how good could MSU be if it was even an average 3-point shooting team.

Maybe 1-2 more makes from deep against Kansas flips that lone ‘L’ to a close ‘W’ and maybe 1-2 more against Bowling Green makes it a much more comfortable win instead of sweating it out for 40 minutes.

A year ago, Michigan State was 1-for-20 from deep in the opening loss to James Madison, 1-for-11 in the second game against Southern Indiana, 6-for-19 in the third game against Duke, and then 7-for-20 in a win over Butler and 10-for-25 in a win over Alcorn State. It took about 3-4 games before the Spartans truly figured it out from distance and we have to hope the same thing happens here.

Michigan State basketball needs to figure something out quickly because it faces a Samford team that’s averaging 97 points per game and is shooting 35 percent from deep on Tuesday night.