UNC Basketball: Analyzing Shot Charts from the 2013-14 Season

As a part of Keeping It Heel’s 2014-15 UNC Basketball Preview series, let’s take a look back at last season to see how some of the Tar Heel’s key contributors shot from the field using these nifty shot charts from NylonCalculus.com.

A quick guide to the shot charts… the color represents the field goal percentage from that location compared to the NBA average for that spot. The more squares, the more shots that were taken from that location.

All of these charts show a great picture of how the Tar Heels shot the ball last season from specific spots on the court. Let’s start with Brice Johnson’s shot chart. Remember, all these charts are from last season.

Brice Johnson

I covered Brice Johnson at length in this piece, so I won’t focus on him too much. Look at how good he is from the baseline and around the basket. That makes sense, because watching Brice you see how talented he is with that short jumper and how he finishes around the basket with rim rocking dunks.

This season, expect a similar looking shot chart from Brice Johnson with even more usage (bigger and more numbers of squares) because of the loss of James Michael McAdoo and his shots to the NBA.

Marcus Paige

Carolina fans knew that Marcus Paige was really good shooter just from watching him play all of last season. But his absurd shooting percentage numbers don’t really do him justice — he shot 44% from the field last year and 38.9% from three, which are good but not out of this world numbers. Now Tar Heel fans have proof of Paige’s shooting dominance.

I circled five different pockets of bright red. Remember, red represents field goal shooting from that place that is well above the NBA average for that spot on the floor. The more red, the better, and Paige certainly has tons of that color on his shot chart.

I was surprised to see not a lot of usage at the rim for Paige. I think he hits a lot of floaters and runners, and maybe that pocket of blue in front of the rim is where Paige often misses that floater.

In the 2014-15 Marcus Paige shot chart, look for more usage and more red from the corners as Paige plays more off the ball, and expect to see about the same amount of red as Paige continues to shoot the lights out from beyond the arc for the Tar Heels.

Nate Britt

The opposite of Paige’s shot chart would be Britt’s shot chart, which has a lot of blue from a lot of spots on the floor. The big question is whether or not Britt’s switched shooting hand will help him shoot better this season. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click on that link above.) I will be keeping a close eye on Britt’s shot chart in the early stages of the season to see if that change makes any difference.

Best case scenario for Britt’s shot chart sees him get closer to yellow in all areas of the court, especially around the basket.

J.P. Tokoto

As you can see from Tokoto’s shot chart, he is an excellent finisher around the rim. But from three-point land, Tokoto is a non-threat. He didn’t take many shots, and he also didn’t make many of them. He also took a lot of midrange shots, but didn’t excel at making them at a high rate.

The big question for Tokoto this year, as I wrote on the chart itself — Will he show improvement as a jump shooter? I’m sure he put in a lot of work over the summer in the gym working on the shot, but will it show in games?

Kennedy Meeks

I was surprised that Kennedy didn’t finish as an above average shooter around the rim. Overall, not a lot of dots from him. Expect a lot more this season.

Even though McAdoo isn’t on the team this year, this is his shot chart.

That is about what I expected. Pretty up and down.

Again, all those shot charts were from NylonCalculus.com. If you want to explore the charts for all NCAA Players, go here!