Sometimes in sports you hear about players who are “odd year” players or “even year” players, meaning they tend to swing wildly between productive and unproductive seasons. Of course there is no such thing as an “odd year” player. With a normal distribution in performance, these patterns will occur randomly. 

But this annual variation is exaggerated in college basketball data where the sample sizes are so small. A good shooter can fall into a slump that lasts the entire season. Minnesota guard Blake Hoffarber made at least 70 threes in every year of his career, except his sophomore season, when he could not buy a basket from deep.

Because of that small sample problem, particularly with three-point shooting, today I wanted to look at players that suffered huge drops in their ORtg last season. For players that suffered these drops because of poor three-point shooting last year, perhaps it was only a one-year trend:

A bounce back year would do wonders for these team’s performances this season. Of course, there is no guarantee that 2010 is the player’s true ability. Perhaps 2010 was the fluke and 2011 is the norm.

For other players that suffered huge drops in efficiency last year, it is harder to know what conclusions to draw. Here are more players that suffered big drops in ORtg:

For some players, like CJ Harris of Wake Forest there may be hope. Harris’ poor performance was likely a symptom of his team’s complete collapse, not his individual lack of ability. (It is really hard to rack up assists when your teammates cannot make shots.) And for players like Ronald Nored and Reggie Moore who saw their assist rate fall, the change may have been due to the change in who handled the ball in the offensive system.

Similarly, the drop for Quincy Acy, Jordan Theodore, and Andrew Fitzgerald reflected the fact that those players became much more aggressive shooters when on the floor. When you are less selective in your shooting, you will usually make a lower percentage of shots. 

But the other drops in production are disturbing. Storm Warren, David Foster, Jack Trotter, Luke Loucks, and Chris Bass all saw a distressing increase in their turnover rate. Chris Bass in particular, turns the ball over so often, that I’m surprised he gets any playing time at all. 

And other trends are also disturbing. Dominic Cheek suddenly completely lost the ability to make a two-point basket. Meanwhile, Scoop Jardine and Tim Abromaitis lost their FT touch and some of their shooting touch overall.

Small sample size may still be an explanation for these other drops, but it is much less likely to be the explanation for these other categories. All it takes is a handful of three point baskets to significantly improve a player’s offensive efficiency  But it takes a lot of FTs to do the same thing.