NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Tyler Lundblade has one sweetest shots in college basketball. He knows it, his Belmont teammates know it, and opponents most certainly know it.
“You know when it leaves your hand if it felt good or not,” Lundblade said. “I think every shot’s going in.”
And he’s not alone.
“I think it’s going in every time,” Belmont forward Drew Sharnowski said. “I know if I set a good screen there’s a pretty good chance the ball is going in.”
Lundblade is the reigning NCAA three-point champion and the star of 22-4 Belmont’s run to the top of the Missouri Valley Conference this season.
Despite being the focus of every opponent’s defense Lundblade leads the Bruins in scoring at nearly 16 points per game. He has scored in double figures 23 times this year including a career-high 27 in Belmont’s 103-86 win over rival Murray State last month.
And he does it thanks to unlimited range. He’s knocked down 88 three-pointers, joining the long list of exceptional shooters in a Belmont program that has made more threes than any other program in the country over the past 30 years.
“The way that he’s been guarded all year is an indication that he’s the best we’ve ever had,” Belmont head coach Casey Alexander said. “He’s had so few clean looks. He’s always the focal point of the defense.”
Lundblade’s name is already in the record books. A year ago, he made a school record 104 threes to pass Bruins’ legend Ian Clark for the most makes in a single season.
He also led the country, shooting 48 percent from behind the arc.
“(On) my basketball reference page there’s a little stat that’s in bold now because it’s an NCAA leader, so that’s pretty cool,” Lundblade said. “And it’s something I can hold on to forever.”
It was a breakout season that almost didn’t happen. Lundblade started his college career at SMU as a preferred walk-on but transferred to TCU after the coach retired. He played just 50 minutes over the next two seasons with the Horned Frogs and went into the summer of 2024 wondering where, and even if, his next opportunity would come.
That’s when a former coach put him in touch with Belmont’s Alexander.
“It was late June,” Lundblade remembers. “And I had no idea what I was going to do, where I was going to go, if I was going to keep playing basketball. And they gave me a shot, and I am forever grateful for coach.”
Given the chance, Lundblade delivered one of the best shooting drills the Belmont coaching staff had ever seen. He was given a walk-on spot on the team, but no guarantees beyond that.
Lundblade remembers Alexander specifically telling him that he would get what he earned in the Belmont program. A chance for a fresh start after the way his career began.
“We didn’t know what his role would be, how much he would play, how impactful he would be,” Alexander said. “It took a lot of games for him to kind of settle in to being good and then all of a sudden he was great and he’s never looked back.”
Lundblade broke into the Bruins’ starting lineup, then burst onto the scene in an eight-three, 25-point effort in an upset win at Bradley last January. A few games later he knocked down a career-high nine threes in a win at Missouri State.
A year later he’s no longer sneaking up on opponents. Defenses are doing their best to bump, grab and hold Lundblade on every offensive possession to try to limit his looks.
But the shots keep falling. He has six games of five or more three-pointers this season and is on pace to break his own school record from last year.
“If you see a couple go in you just become more unconscious,” Lundblade said. “Even if you miss the next one, you think the next five are going in.”
Lundblade’s presence on the floor has opened things up for his Belmont teammates as well. The Bruins have eight players averaging at least seven points per game and lead the nation in effective field goal percentage while scoring more than 84 points per game.
That offense has led Belmont to a 12-3 conference record and a two-game lead over Murray State and Bradley with five games left in the regular season. The Bruins have their sights set on wrapping up their first Missouri Valley Conference championship since moving up to the league four years ago.
They also want to secure the no. 1 seed for the MVC Tournament in St. Louis March 5th-8th where they can further stamp their legacy by cutting down the nets and securing a return to the NCAA Tournament.
“We want to go dancing,” Lundblade said. “For me, with this staff and kind of the new life I’ve had here, I don’t think it would bring me any more joy than to take this team to the tournament. Winning’s the ultimate goal and I think we could do something special.”
It would be one final piece of validation for a player that was once overlooked but just kept working.
And when Lundblade got his shot, he made it.
“It’s a great story, but you know what?” Alexander asked. “He’s earned it. We gave him a platform and put good people around him, but he’s made the most of his opportunity.”
