Virginia and Texas Tech shot only 50% and 62% respectively from the Free Throw line in their games…somehow won their games …AND are playing for the championship.
Defense !!
Safe to say that TT owns the state of Michigan.
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I tried to point out earlier in the season, coaches aren’t going to take away more time from other drills to spend an extra 30 minutes a day on free throws when the difference between being an average free throw shooting team and the best free throw shooting team results in 1 to 2 points a game max.
The best a coach can do is let these players understand, if the game is close in the final 2 minutes and you want to play, you gotta hit your free throws. If that isn’t enough to inspire the players to shoot more free throws on their own time, including the off season, then they just don’t play in close games.
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So you are saying that players need to spend time practicing free throws just on their own time and not in practice. Got it.
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Agree with you Jimmy that over the course of a game 1 to 3 point can separate an average FT shooting team versus a good one. However, when FT’s are important (late in a close game) making them versus missing can mean win or loss. Ask Auburn. If NM State makes their 3 FT Auburn goes home after first round. Virginia made 3 to send Auburn home yesterday. So Virginia made 50% of their FT for the game, but 100% when they were very important to win the game.
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THIS . . . . .
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Meaning when it is on the line you want the ball in the hand of best FT shooter !!
Team FT shooting percentage does not always tell the story.
70 % plus is good.
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It’s not what I said. I said the difference between a “great” free throw shooting team and an average free throw shooting team is 1 to 2 points.
Let me break that down to be more clear.
78.2% is the percentage of the 5th and 6th best percentages in the entire league this year.
70.5% is the percentage by teams ranked 175th through 179th.
The average free throws shot by teams is less than 17 per game.
78.2% of 17 attempts equals 13.29 free throws made
70.5% of 17 attempts equals 11.99 free throws made
There will be ebbs and flows when it comes to free throws from player to player, game to game. The best a coach can do is keep track of which players have shown a tendency to shoot best under pressure and/or with tired legs and which ones shoot the worst. If the game comes down to free throws, a coach makes substitutions accordingly.
Practices have a set amount of time. Coaches all have a set amount of time they have the players shooting free throws. No one on this forum has any idea if our players spend more time or less time in practice shooting free throws. It’s just a bad assumption made by a few reactionary fans that if we are having a bad free throw shooting night, we must not have practiced free throws enough.
Have you watched Virginia practice free throws? Did they spend more time shooting free throws than we do? Do they do anything different like having having crowd noise blasting in?
The easiest thing to do is find examples that fit any narrative. Virginia versus Duke back in January. In the last 40 seconds, Duke went 3 of 6, Virginia was 2 of 2 “100%.” Duke won.
This is a great example in statistics of finding correlation instead of causation. What else happened? Did someone miss a layup? Did someone make a miracle 3 point shot with 1 second to go? Did the refs call a bad foul on the final play? Free throws are only as important as you make it up in your head. It’s a subject for people that remember things they want to remember about a game and forget things they don’t care to remember.
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True, shaggy. Like I’ve posted before, I guess some of our fans would be happier with Incarnate Word. As EE69 posted, try to keep the ball in the hands of your best FT shooters down the stretch
Going forward the only bad foul shooters we have are Harris and Gresham. The rest of the guys are capable of being 75-80 percent foul shooters imo.
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I love it when posters that fancy themselves as film and stats guys say “the easiest thing you can do is find examples that fit any narrative”.
You can’t make that stuff up.
…and Cronin doesn’t have real offensive players so he never does much.
What about the final three points scored by Virginia? Seems to me those were pretty high pressure free throws.
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Extreme pressure…but a very good FT shooter…