In Awe ... Free Throws.

B

Barton Hills

1,000+ Posts
I'm willing to look past our frustrating stagnant offense, and I'm willing to ignore our team getting abused in the paint last night, but this FT trend is getting out of hand.

11/21 ... 52%, including 3 front ends. Torbush.

Now let's look at our percentage in our first 5 Big XII games :

62/101 ... 61 f'n %. Are you serious ?

For comparison sake, the past three seasons we have been at 74%, 74%, 73% from the line in Big XII play.

I'm trying to watch the game last night, while staying calm enough to not throw my remote thru my TV, and even my wife comments, "My old HS team at Arlington Bowie would abuse this team from the stripe".

If Vegas had a line for this I would bet a paycheck that free throws will be the cause of our exit from the NCAA's.

Get back in the gym ...

Happy Thursday.
 
I'm not going to argue that our free throw shooting is good, but I think you might be overestimating its effect on our success (or lack thereof) in conference play. Imagine we had shot 74% from the line over those 5 games -- that's another 13 points, or 2.7 points per game. (Round it up to 3 points per game or so to account for some 1 and 1 situations where we don't miss the first free throw if you like.)

3 points wouldn't have made any difference against Mizzou or A&M.
 
the free throw % must improve. there will be some tight games where it will matter. the offense bogging down is a serious concern. barnes stresses defense and usually points first to the defense when we lose. however, when a team has a comfortable lead, it is easy to just let it happen on offense. if that had been a close game, the sheephumpers might have felt the pressure a bit more and not been as efficient on offense. comfort zone is often an important part of offensive efficiency. our offensive sets must improve if we want to go deep.
 
I very strongly disagree.

We missed numerous FT's last night during strong A&M runs. Those makes could have shifted momentum, or at least gotten some confidence back into our players.

I think that missing FT's has a mental component that you are ignoring. At least that's my take.
 
I am with you Barton Hills...There were a few occasions last night when free throws could of narrowed the lead to single digits and we missed...basketball is so much about runs and momentum and missing these shots really hurts our teams psych. Might get our players thinking it just isn't our night, or other similar self defeating thoughts. No excuse for college teams to be so poor at the stripe.
 
I watched a little bit of Memphis versus UH last night and they are a very poor FT shooting team which means they will not get anywhere near the Final Four.

A well coached team will beat a bad FT shooting team in a close game and they will get one of those by the round of 16.
 
No excuse for such poor FT%. James really stinks. Augustin has stunk on occasion.

Just ask Coach G and her players about FTs. Last week they beat a ranked OSU team because they hit a decent FT% and they lost by 1 to a top 10 Baylor team in Waco last night because they stunk from the line.

Free throw are just that - free shots. Missed free throws are a morale destroyer for the shooting team and a confidence builder for the opponent. Most players quickly lose some respect for players who are consistently ****** from the line, Wilt and Shaq two notable exceptions. Players get down when they foul a player who hits a high FT%, the old, "******* it, why did I foul that SOB, he'll nail 'em."

I know RB has these kids work on FTs, but this squad has some motivational and mental discipline issues like no other RB team has had.
 
And the FT% doesn't even reflect how much it's costing us. I think we missed four front ends of a one-and-one. So that's really 8 possible points lost right there.
 
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