Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic <\/p>\n
Rick Pitino made a plea to his players Friday: Let it fly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stop worrying about your misses. Ignore the percentages. <\/p>\n
When the 3-point shots are there, let them go.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That came after St. John\u2019s attempted a season-low nine 3-pointers \u2014 and made two of them \u2014 in its frustrating one-point loss at Creighton on New Year\u2019s Eve.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be quite honest with you, it defies all the metrics of the game,\u201d the Hall of Fame coach said as the Johnnies prepared to host skidding Butler at Carnesecca Arena on Saturday afternoon. \u201cWinning like we\u2019re winning is very difficult if you\u2019re not getting the easy break of the 3-point shot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was a different tone than Pitino had after the setback, when he said St. John\u2019s (11-3, 2-1) isn\u2019t a good 3-point shooting team. <\/p>\n
That likely isn\u2019t going to change. <\/p>\n
The Johnnies are 224th nationally in 3-point percentage (32.8), 283rd in made 3s per game (6.6) and 295th in attempts (20.2). <\/p>\n
In three league games, they have made a total of eight 3s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s can\u2019t be afraid to take them when opportunities present themselves, as Pitino saw too much hesitation from his team against Creighton.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CHECK OUT THE LATEST BIG EAST STANDINGS AND ST. JOHN\u2019S STATS<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s bothered me a little bit is guys are counting their misses, counting their percentages and not taking them and they can make them,\u201d he said. \u201cRJ [Luis] being one. RJ is passing up a lot of open 3s. He didn\u2019t do that last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAaron [Scott] hasn\u2019t had many good looks. Simeon [Wilcher] has to move more to get open 3s and they\u2019re our shooters, basically, until Brady [Dunlap] comes back.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a player, Pitino joked that if he missed four straight shots, it would only make him want to take more. In recent days, he has encouraged his players not to overthink it. He has even told Wilcher\u2019s father, Sergio, to hammer home the point to his son, who is St. John\u2019s best 3-point shooter at 40.5 percent but is only averaging 2.6 attempts per game from distance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very surprising to me because all the teams I\u2019ve coached loved taking the 3,\u201d Pitino said. \u201cThese guys have more confidence in the mid-range than they do the 3. But they have to take them or the mid-range isn\u2019t going to be there. We\u2019ll get there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another issue, which Pitino believes is connected to 3-point shooting, is pace. At its best, St. John\u2019s pushes the ball and gets out in transition. The ball moves. It is ranked 96th in the nation in tempo. <\/p>\n
But in the loss to Creighton and large portions of the recent win over Providence, it was too stagnant. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a coincidence that in St. John\u2019s three worst offensive performances of the year, the losses to Georgia and Creighton and win over Providence, it averaged just eight assists. <\/p>\n
It also went 7 of 46 from 3-point range in those contests.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur pace throughout the entire [Creighton] game was pretty much about as bad as it gets,\u201d forward Zuby Ejiofor said. \u201cThat\u2019s something that we worked on in practice [Thursday]. Just moving the ball a lot quicker than we\u2019ve been doing these past few games.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The flip side, of course, is St. John\u2019s is still in a good spot despite the recent offensive issues. <\/p>\n
It is 2-1 in league play with five of the next eight games at home, where it is undefeated. <\/p>\n
Ten of its 11 wins have come by at least 13 points. <\/p>\n
Its defense is ranked ninth in the country in efficiency and it is an elite rebounding team featuring the nation\u2019s leader in offensive rebounds per game (4.5) in Ejiofor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re sort of like a football team that runs the ball a lot, plays great defense and occasionally makes good passes to keep the [opponent] honest,\u201d Pitino said. \u201cThat\u2019s who we are right now. The more pace we play with, the better the 3-point shooting will be.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, as long as we play as hard as we\u2019re playing with our desire to win, we\u2019ll get there. We have a group of fighters. They\u2019ll get it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Rick Pitino made a plea to his players Friday: Let it fly.\u00a0 Stop worrying about your misses. Ignore the percentages. When the 3-point shots are there, let them go.\u00a0 That came after St. John\u2019s attempted a season-low nine 3-pointers \u2014 and made two of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":150984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-150983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150985,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150983\/revisions\/150985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}