The narrative I want to believe is that Trent wasn’t accustomed to taking so many catch and shoot 3s coming into college, and it took him a few months to get a good feel for the role. That’s not unreasonable. The robot in me thinks Trent might just be on a hot streak and could easily regress back to being a true low-to-mid-30s 3pt shooter. But that doesn’t seem likely, given his FT stroke.
Taking the optimistic view, his emergence as a 40-45% catch and shoot guy has pushed Duke into the top 100 in 3pt%. Duval’s emergence as not the worst shooting PG in college basketball history has also helped a bit. Taken together, having Duval as a true 27-33% wide open shooter and Trent at 40-45% should give Duke all the spacing it needs to potentially overtake Wisconsin 2015 as the best offense since 2002.
The most intriguing possibility is when Duke is trailing in an NCAAT game and needs to take some risk to make up points quickly. In that case, a lineup with Allen, O’Connell, Trent, Carter, Bagley could get it done over a small timeframe, though you probably wouldn’t want to see that lineup in regular, longer stretches, since any opposing guard might as well start the possession with the ball in the paint.