The Dome Dilemma: Why Poor Shooting at Houston's NRG Stadium May Be a Myth

HOUSTON — The ugliest national championship game in recent memory took place at NRG Stadium five years ago. On that night, Connecticut and Butler combined to miss 88 shots.

Connecticut won 53-41, but our eyes lost.

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The Final Four is returning to NRG this weekend, bringing back memories of that brick-filled night and the concern that a repeat could take place in 2016.

The four teams took the floor for the first time Thursday, and there were reports of air balls.

"I had a jumper, Kris [Jenkins] was guarding me and it didn't get there," Villanova junior Josh Hart said. "I also almost air-balled a free throw and thought, you know what, it might be time to drive on Saturday."

But is there really anything to support the idea of dome-infested cold shooting? Or is it just a myth created by a few brickfests such as the Butler-UConn final?

I studied the last five years of NCAA tournament data using only the final four rounds of the tournament. Until this year, the NCAA played regionals in both basketball-specific arenas and in football domes. The Final Four every year is in a dome.

The data suggests that it's slightly harder to shoot into the backdrop of a dome, but not by as much as most basketball observers believe.

	2 pt. FG%	3 pt. FG%	FT%
Basketball Arenas	47.3	34.3	74.6
Football domes	46.5	32.8	71.4

The free-throw percentage might be the best measure, because it takes out the influence of defense. While the percentage is slightly lower when comparing these two venues, teams are actually shooting better in domes than the NCAA season-long average at the line, which has been between 69 and 70 percent over the last five years.

The NCAA does change the setup for Final Fours by moving the court from one of the end zones to the middle of the floor. (AT&T Stadium in Dallas had the Final Four setup for its regional in 2013.)

The Final Four setup would suggest a more difficult shooting environment. Any shooter will tell you that the easy courts to shoot on are ones with a wall right behind the basket. The farther back the backdrop, the harder it is to adjust your eyes. And you'll never have a deeper backdrop than a basketball floor placed in the middle of a football stadium.

"I've never seen anything like it," North Carolina point guard Joel Berry said. "I've been in arenas, but there's nothing like it. If you look at the court and look at just the little bottom section, these seats go far back. That's ridiculous. It's pretty big out there. But you've just got to focus in on the court."

The numbers say that, typically, players adapt. There doesn't appear to be a big difference between whether the court is in the end zone or the middle of the field. In fact, teams are actually shooting the ball better from beyond the three-point line on the middle-of-the-field setup.

	2 pt. FG%	3 pt. FG%	FT%
End zone	47.0	31.9	72.3
50-yard line	47.6	35.5	70.6

Could this be just an NRG Stadium issue?

I separated out the NRG data, and the shooting numbers are lower, but the sample size isn't big enough to draw any conclusions.

	2 pt. FG%	3 pt. FG%	FT%
NRG end zone	44.0	26.7	74.8
NRG 50-yard line	36.5	28.1	68.5
NRG totals	40.5	27.6	71.8

Asking the Shooters

I spent Friday asking the Final Four's best shooters what it's like to shoot in this stadium. Shooters can be a sensitive breed—doubt is something they don't want creeping into their minds—and their answers reflected as much. 

Buddy Hield, Oklahoma: "I'm a shooter and I've got to go in there and make shots. Don't worry about what everybody is saying about the depth perception. If you know how to make shots, you go in there and shoot the ball."

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Marcus Paige, North Carolina: "I've only shot in here one time so far and I think it went OK. I don't think it's as big a deal as some people are making it. ... You've just got to block that out. I think if you think about that too much and anticipate it being a problem, it becomes a problem." 

Ryan Arcidiacono, Villanova: "You never really understand it until you walk onto that floor and see how many seats there are. Just imagine all those people there. You just have to think about it as the same basketball floor you've been growing up on. You're just on another basketball floor and you happen to have a big surrounding." 

Trevor Cooney, Syracuse: "I don't think it'll hurt. Obviously, at the Carrier Dome, the court is not in the center of the field, it's toward the end-zone area, so you don't have the backdrop that you'd have down here. I think it helps a little bit." 

Joel Berry, North Carolina: "I think I saw more air balls than usual. You've just got to try to focus in a little bit more and knock the shot down and can't focus on the backdrop or anything."

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Hield spent most of Friday's practice shooting threes, and it looked like business as usual for the tournament's best gunner. He was making shot after shot and then scooted back about 10 feet beyond the three-point line. His rainbows were still going straight through the net. 

"I don't worry about Buddy making shots," assistant coach Steve Henson said. "I don't think the background or lack thereof would bother him at all. He's going to let it fly."

That will be the mentality Saturday, especially in the Oklahoma-Villanova game. 

Syracuse is also a three-point-happy team, and its 2-3 zone usually forces the other team into firing away from deep. 

If we get a bricky Final Four, the narrative of "domes, where jump shots go to die" will likely be the story out of Houston. 

But the real reason for those poor shooting performances will likely be good defense and maybe some nerves from playing on the biggest stage of these players' careers.

C.J. Moore covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter, @CJMooreBR.