These players are on the brink of joining an exclusive club in college basketball.
In a basketball era of centers equally comfortable shooting 3s and blocking shots, unicorns, point guards that pull up from 30 feet and 7-foot-tall point guards, there are still true rarities in the sport to celebrate. I’m talking, of course, about the 50-40-90 club – players who manage to shoot above 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from three, and 90 percent from the free throw line over the course of a full season.
The long grind of the NBA season makes it an especially rare achievement at the highest level. Just seven players in history have logged qualifying (minimum number of shots & free throws) seasons. And even then, just Steve Nash and Larry Bird managed to do it more than once.
Even in the much shorter college basketball season, it remains a rare feat. Per sports-reference’s database (and, in case you’ve never used it, the “Player Season finder” tool is excellent) – which does only extend back to the 1992-93 season – just seven players have joined the club while making 100 shots or more over the course of the season. While several members have rather low 3-point attempt totals or free throw attempts, I’m sticking with 100 field goals as the cut-off. It feels nice, round, and completely arbitrary.
Just this year, though, there are currently three players who are provisional members of the 50-40-90 (100+ made field goal attempts) club: Miles Bowman (High Point), Markus Howard (Marquette), and Mikal Bridges (Villanova). It’s this glut of potential add-ins that inspired this piece – a quick look at these candidates (and others who are close this season) for one of the more exclusive distinctions in basketball, college or professional.
Markus Howard – Marquette
(50.0 FG% – 54.1 3P% – 91.3 FT%)
Marquette’s freshman sharpshooter is currently in excellent position to become a member of the club. If the season ended right now, he’d be in.
Marquette was simply missing too many games for a shot chart to be useful, so we’ll break down his shooting with the help of hoop-math. One of the best notes on Markus is that his marksmanship from 3 is what pulls him above 50 percent from the field; he’s currently hitting just 46 percent from inside the arc, but over 54 percent from beyond. Much of this is his unfortunate taste for just a few too many 2-point jumpers. Per hoop-math, he’s taken 22.2 percent of his shots from 2-point jumper range, and is hitting just 31.9 percent of them.
But he’s posted solid efficiency at the rim (61.4 percent near the basket), and, my god, the 3s. He’s been hitting 54.1 percent of his nearly 5 attempts per game, a mark that, per KenPom’s database, is the 2nd-best in college basketball (behind Washington Nationals manager/Weber State’s Dusty Baker). Howard’s been a key part of a Marquette team gunning for the best 3-point shooting attack in the country.
He’s already there, so nothing to really report on for improvement. His field goal percentage is a bit close to the cutoff, so maybe a few less 2-point jumpers – especially if he slumps a bit from that ridiculous mark from 3 – could be key to keeping his membership through the last games of the season.