An interesting debate arose on Twitter after Virginia Tech’s incredible shooting performance yesterday.

That could be possible… but I didn’t see numbers.

— The Walking Scorer (@DaWalkingScorer) January 5, 2020

It dawned on me later that there ARE some numbers. Synergy Sports breaks down “Catch & Shoot” plays into Guarded vs. Unguarded, and shows us where a team ranks vis-a-vis the rest of D1 in those categories. They do this for defense and offense. So the lower the PPP other teams score in a type of play, the higher your defensive ranking. I went back to 2013-14 gathering the numbers.  Here they are:

Seems to me that the numbers support the proposition, especially given the lack of correlation between rank and the % of shots that are unguarded. But, Hoo knows?