As part of a new weekly blog series, we will be covering assist data from noteworthy games and throughout the rest of the college basketball season. This data will appear in the form of a graphic showing players who both assisted and received assists in a given game. The graphic is a chord diagram. The width of the chord corresponds to the number of assists, the thicker the chord the more assists between the associated players. Look for the arrows coming out and going into a player’s area. Out arrows indicate an assist and in arrow indicate made shots. Thanks to Dr. David Borland, Senior Visualization Researcher at RENCI, for the visualization! This week, we take a look back at the Wildcats’ road win over the George Washington Colonials from Saturday, February 3rd.
The Wildcats utilized their fantastic ball movement to earn a 87-58 win against the Colonials. Davidson had 21 assists in the game, tied for the fifth most on the season. This great passing led to many open shots, and the Wildcats finished the game shooting 30-61 from the field (49.2%) and 13-29 from the three-point line (44.8%). What is especially noteworthy is that 70% of their shots came from assists in this game. Throughout the season, Davidson has had a large percentage of their shots come on assists, and they currently stand at 14th in the country in assist rate at 61.8%.
KiShawn Pritchett led the way with seven assists for the game, with four of them going to Peyton Aldridge. Jon Axel Gudmundsson contributed with five assists and spread them fairly evenly among Oskar Michelsen, KiShawn Pritchett, Peyton Aldridge, and Rusty Reigel. Finally, out of Rusty Reigel’s three assists, two went to Kellan Grady while the other went to Will Magarity. Davidson will look to build on their strong assist numbers when they take on Saint Joseph’s on Tuesday, February 6th.
Wow, this is my favorite game.thanks for sharing