To three, or not to three: For St. Joe’s, it’s rarely a question

St. Joseph’s had suffered one of those losses that, in the moment, makes people question every little thing.

How do you lose to Texas A&M-Commerce as a 20-point home favorite?

The easiest, knee-jerkiest reaction was to look at the three-point shooting, see the Hawks made six of their 30 attempts, and wonder why they didn’t adjust their game plan in what ended up being a three-point loss last month. Why didn’t St. Joe’s take more twos?

Billy Lange readily pointed to a few missed layups that could have made the difference, but when the St. Joe’s coach watched the game back, his takeaway wasn’t that his team shot too many three-pointers. Quite the opposite.

“My debrief of that game is we should’ve taken eight more threes,” Lange said. “We lost that game because of decisions we made in the paint.”

There were at least six open threes the Hawks didn’t get up, Lange said.

“If you make two of them, you win,” Lange said.

This is basketball in 2023. The game is won with three-pointers and layups because that’s what the math says gets the job done. One of the biggest emphases in the Hawks offense is the importance of not taking bad shots in the paint. Lange and his coaches advise against layups when you’re fading away from the basket and other contested mid-range jumpers. The offense is built on spacing, sharing, and shooting.

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St. Joe’s entered Sunday’s showdown with Princeton at Hagan Arena taking 30.4 three-pointers per game and making 36.5% of them. The Hawks took 26 during their 74-70 win and made just seven (26.9%). Princeton made it clear early that open threes were going to be tough to come by.

“The last few games that we’ve played, it’s been apparent to us that teams are focused on eliminating three-point shooting,” Lange said. “I felt like our guys made a good adjustment.”

The Hawks still won because of the way they play offense (plus a few timely defensive stops). They found ways to get to the rim for high-percentage points, and once they started attacking the paint, it opened up the outside shot. Exhibit A in that regard was a Xzayvier Brown drive and kick to an open corner triple from Kacper Klaczek to give St. Joe’s its largest lead, seven, with eight minutes to go.

Erik Reynolds II, the Hawks’ star guard, made just two of his 11 three-point attempts, but he still led all scorers with 21 because he found other ways to score, including a perfect 7-for-7 day at the free-throw line. Reynolds, the team’s leading scorer, is the biggest beneficiary of this free-flowing offense.

“We have a lot of options built in,” he said. “I feel like I can use those things, get into those gaps, make plays for my teammates, get open shots.”

It helps having talented guards next to him in Brown, Lynn Greer III, and Cameron Brown, as well as good screeners in Rasheer Fleming, Anthony Finkley, and Klaczek.

Schemes are great, having the personnel to run them is even better.

Only six teams in Division I were taking more threes than St. Joe’s entering Sunday. To prepare for the Hawks is basically to prepare for the Golden State Warriors, which sounds like hyperbole but isn’t. When the Warriors won the NBA title in 2021-22, they took 45.5% of their shots that season from three-point range.

St. Joe’s entered Sunday with 50.7% of its shots coming from beyond the arc.

This isn’t new for Lange, who is in his fifth season on Hawk Hill.

In Lange’s first season at Navy, in 2004-05, the Midshipmen took 19.6 threes per game. By his fourth year, that number was up to 27.3, fifth in Division I. Navy finished second in the Patriot League and Lange was conference coach of the year.

Call this space-share-shoot version of his offensive coaching philosophy a collision of all his experiences. Lange worked under the Shot Doctor himself, Herb Magee; Speedy Morris, whose teams weren’t shy; and Jay Wright, whose teams need no further explanation.

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Lange, who went back to Villanova for a second stint after seven seasons at Navy, and Wright would talk a lot about the emotional weight that three-pointers had on opponents. Ask Villanova what it felt like when St. Joe’s was making shots from everywhere during a 14-for-27 three-point barrage and 13-point victory at Finneran Pavilion two weeks ago.

Lange also spent six seasons on the Sixers bench, briefly overlapping with Mike D’Antoni, whose teams always shot a lot of threes.

At St. Joe’s, Lange’s first team took the fourth-highest total of three-pointers in the country. A year later, in 2020-21, only two teams took more threes per game.

The players know they have the green light to shoot, and watching them play makes that clear. The Hawks, who are now 8-2, finally have the personnel to make it all work in a way that results in more wins. Lange said most of St. Joe’s three-pointers simply fit into the flow of the offense. He said he has only really run plays to get three-pointers for former Hawks forward Taylor Funk and Reynolds during his five seasons at the helm.

To be clear, bad threes in Lange’s offense do exist. They look like dribble-up transition jumpers without a pass and without a backpedaling defender. They look like a shooter who isn’t set, whose feet aren’t squared.

“We talk about catching to shoot,” Lange said. “It’s not about being open, it’s about being ready.”

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Other bad threes might be related to time and score, but even those situations allow for nuance.

“That doesn’t mean that you can’t take a three in that possession, it’s just maybe the ball has to hit a second or third side and then you take it,” Lange said.

The result of all of this is a basketball team that plays a high-variance style. The Hawks aren’t your grandmother’s 20-point favorite, and they’re not your grandfather’s 12-point underdog. Easier said: They’re rarely going to be out of a game, no matter the opponent, and are going to be in games like the Commerce one more often than a lot of other teams.

It’s the reality of a team that lives and dies by the three. But, as Sunday showed, there are other ways to win, too.