Swing Skill Series: From Rim Pressure to Range — Can Sebastian Mack Add a Three-Point Threat?

Each summer, I carve out time to watch each of Missouri’s transfer additions play with their former squad. How do I choose the viewing menu? The pool is comprised of games they played against teams that finished in the top 100 of KenPom. 

Using descriptive stats, I identify five “median” games for that player. Those viewings are the basis for the Swing Skill Series, which fuses data and video to highlight a facet of a player’s game that might influence the scope of their impact once they put on black and gold. 

I’ve already explored whether Arizona State transfer Shawn Phillips Jr. can hold up when pulled to the perimeter defensively Detroit Mercy transfer Jayden Stone is the next source of bench scoring, and Jevon Porter’s defensive flexibility.

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It’s doubtful many of us made it a habit to stay up late and tune into UCLA, but if we had been insomniacs, it wouldn’t have taken many viewings to detect a trend: analysts noting Sebastian Mack’s aversion to jumpers. 

“This guy goes to the rim,” ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla noted on the call of the Bruins’ tilt against Arizona.

A month later, Bill Raftery, working on behalf of FS1, expanded on that theme after Mack knifed to the cup from a pick-and-roll in the left slot against Rutgers. “Keep working on that outside shot, and you’ve got a [complete] package,” he said. 

Four days later, Don MacLean chimed in while his alma mater routed Iowa at Pauley Pavilion. To him, Mack’s growth went beyond making more stationary jumpers. “People talk about improving shooting and look at percentages,” MacLean said. “Well, what kind of shots are you taking from behind the line?”

Bringing up Mack’s shooting is ground we covered — albeit quickly — when the soon-to-be junior committed to Missourion April 7. And in the last four months, the contours of that terrain haven’t changed all that much. The question isn’t whether Mack’s move to Columbia heralds a drastic overhaul of his game. Coach Dennis Gates and his staff sought another player who would not back down from attacking the paint and applying rim pressure. 

So, what’s the point of this piece? Well, my premise won’t blow you away: Mack needs to become a competent threat to space the floor, and the pathway isn’t all that treacherous for him to navigate.

Let’s begin by looking at Mack’s base camp. Using Synergy Sports’ data, we can plot the average volume of catch-and-shoot jumpers and the efficiency of those shots for (almost) every player in the Big Ten Conference last season. As you can see, Mack sits just below the medians for both those variables. 

What I find interesting, though, are his neighbors: Iowa’s Ladji Dembele, Michigan State’s Jaxon Kohler, and Michigan’s Danny Wolf. Functionally, Mack’s propensity to shoot the rock is on par with stretch fours and fives. Over 25 outings against teams that finished in the top 100 of KenPom, the former top-60 recruit made 11 of 34 shots off the catch from long range. 

That modest volume isn’t surprising when you do line-by-line accounting. For example, Mack only launched seven catch-and-shoot threes over a nine-game span from mid-January to mid-February. He clanked all of them. But in 18 other games, he shot a 40.7 percent clip, including 6 of 13 over the Bruins’ final seven games. 

To be clear: I’m not saying Mack was a suppressed sniper over two years in Westwood. His best stretches still came on paltry volume. However, it wouldn’t have taken much effort for him to reach the median (2.0 3FGA/game) among his Big Ten brethren. A lot of that owes to Mack’s play-style preferences, but looking over his film also highlights some helpful schematic context. 

In the five games I watched, Mack attempted seven threes as a catch-and-shoot option. You can watch them below. What do most of the time have in common? Timing. As in late in the shot clock. 

Several of these clips rely on similar actions, like a dribble-handoff followed by reversing the ball and flowing into a step-up PNR, but almost all of them end with Mack having no alternative but to fire away. Because UCLA failed to put the defense in rotation or scramble mode, Mack was pulling the trigger with an obstructed view or from several feet beyond the line. 

Put simply, they’re shots with a high degree of difficulty. The fact that Mack drilled three of them is a bonus. However, it’s not a batch of possessions that gives us much to glean about Mack’s ability to stretch defenses. 

The quality of those shots makes sense when you consider Mack’s broader role within UCLA’s rotation. 

Regardless of the lineup configuration Bruins coach Mick Cronin used, the odds were strong that he utilized Mack as a combo guard. In the games I watched, Mack would check in to give Skyy Clark a breather, but Andrews would slide up to play point guard. It’s telling that Andrews, a freshman, arrived and immediately supplanted Mack as an initiator – even in reserve-heavy groups or with the Bruins enjoying a comfortable lead.

Often, Mack took up positions on the wing or slot and would only get the ball in his mitts if primary or secondary actions came up empty. While he was rarely stagnant, his movement was perfunctory, like interchanging with another guard or jogging through spacing cuts. His best on-ball opportunities were Euro pick-and-rolls run early in a possession or ball screen set in the left slot, allowing him to drive a double-gap with his strong hand. Sometimes, Cronin had UCLA flatten out along the baseline while a big sprinted up to set a high ball screen for Mack. 

Yet there was just one outing in the five I watched where Cronin relied on Mack to power UCLA’s offense. It’s probably little coincidence that it was Mack’s best outing, one where he tallied 16 points on 6 of 12 shooting. But it was more common for Mack to experience five- or 10-minute stretches where he was a bystander.  

Usually, on/off splits provide a helpful indication of how a player’s contributions impact a lineup’s performance. But the context around Mack’s role and usage makes it hard to pin blame on him for UCLA’s offensive efficiency declining by 3.8 points per 100 possessions when he’s on the floor. That split is eerily like Andrews’ mark (-3.9), per EvanMiya.com’s lineup data. Moreover, Andrews’ offensive efficiency (0.759 PPP) lagged behind Mack’s (0.934) last season.

Rummaging around all this data and film, though, leads to a rational inference: Cronin didn’t quite know what to do with Mack. 

Even cursory research turns up stories about Mack’s coach at Coronado High School lobbying Cronin to recruit the slashing combo guard. As a freshman, an ill-constructed roster left Mack as the Bruins’ sole advantage creator. (He also played through a foot injury.) Yet that tether shortened when Cronin added Clark and Kobe Johnson from the transfer portal while Andrews arrived for his freshman year. 

There’s an anecdote in multiple stories about Mack seeking out Cronin as he mulled transferring. “You should stay here,” Cronin reportedly told the guard. “Let me coach the hell out of you.” Back then, Cronin thought adding depth would ease Mack’s workload, which, in turn, would help the sophomore overcome tunnel vision when attacking off the bounce. 

And to Mack’s credit, he embraced his role as a sixth man for the Bruins while improving defensively. Yet playing alongside Clark and Andrews didn’t produce the kind of reliable synergy Cronin might have expected. That trickled down and manifested in the quality of spot-up looks that came Mack’s way – or at least that’s what it looks like when you queue up games. 

Just to be safe – and overcome a small sample – I watched, cataloged and clipped Mack’s other catch-and-shoots from the periods where he seemed willing to bomb away. 

Unsurprisingly, the plurality of those attempts resulted from possessions where UCLA spread the floor in five-out alignment and tried to pry defenses open with a variety of ball-screen actions in the middle of the floor. Except for the last clip in the series below, Mack served as a spacer on the one-side of the floor – ready to catch, set and fire against overloads. 

When Mack has adequate time, he’s diligent about doing work before the ball arrives at his shot pocket: knees slightly bent, feet slightly less than a shoulder-width apart, torso squared up, and hands presenting a target. So often, shot mechanics are picked apart from the waist up, but preparation gets short shrift. A shooter that’s on balance and able to efficiently transfer their energy into elevating straight up spends the milliseconds they’re aloft adjusting their release point and launch trajectory. 

Go back and watch the first batch of clips. Notice how often Mack’s foot positioning and base differ with each attempt. Under duress, his lower half becomes noisy, resulting in some inconsistencies that carry through to his release. 

But when Mack has adequate time to relocate and get on balance, he’s fluid all the way through. That’s even true when he’s had some chances to handle the ball during a set, like the 1-4 flat clips you’ll see below. In a couple of them, Mack has the chance to probe for seams, and finding none, move the ball, relocate and get shot-ready. 

Even Mack’s misses tell us a little bit about him. In these horns-based sets, Mack winds shooting from the corner, watching them hit off the heel. Crucially, they don’t ricochet into oblivion. They bounce almost vertically. Listen, I’m not an professor ofphysics or biomechanics, but experts who apply those principles to shooting have reported that misses like Mack’s are the byproduct of a decent spin rate – usually three rotations – but a lower velocity when the ball comes off the shooter’s hand.

The theory goes like this: the more optimal the release angle, the less force a shooter needs to apply. Why? Because they efficiently elevated and kept their core stable. Put it all together, and these misses hint that Mack’s not having to compensate for being off balance or struggling to create enough upward motion before letting a shot go. 

Lastly, this potpourri of possessions is a grab-bag of actions, but it’s helpful in the sense we can see that Mack’s shot flattens out once he stretches his range closer to the NBA 3-point arc. His release is less of a flipped wrist than a subtle push. That’s likely because he’s not getting enough lift and compensating. 

Which brings us back to how we kicked off the piece and MacLean’s query: What kind of shots are you taking? While Mack’s mechanics aren’t the kind we’d see in an instructional video or camp setting, his jumper isn’t busted. His success, unsurprisingly, is tied to situations where he has adequate time to prepare, make a clean catch, sight his target and elevate. 

As Matt Watkins has shown, Mizzou has generally created enough rim pressure under Dennis Gates to produce a reasonable supply of quality catch-and-shoots beyond the arc. More importantly, data indicate that players in Gates’ program experience a 5.4 percent improvement in performance after completing the Tigers’ developmental program. 

Whenever I’ve seen the staff work with players on their jumpers, the emphasis falls on drills that replicate game conditions — not a player working from spot to spot around the arc while a manager rebounds for them. How MU structures Mack’s reps is integral because he’s never been a high-volume shooter. Not at Coranado High. Not with Vegas Elite on the EYBL circuit. And as we’ve just seen, not in his two years with UCLA. 

This hits on the point Fraschilla made: improvement only comes through amassing enough intelligent repetitions. Assuming Mack’s mechanics aren’t rebuilt from the ground up, the staff would need to craft a development plan that adequately simulates game situations—ones curated to improve and cultivate Mack’s shot selection simultaneously.