Free throws!

[Elliott Tim]

It's because it's an allocation exercise. The amount of practice time available in a given week is a fixed amount. So a big part of Cal's, or any coach's, job is determining how they will allocate that time. Any minute you spend on rebounding is a minute you can't spend on free throws or on defense.

So to decide how to split this, it becomes a matter of deciding where you think you'll get the biggest return. In the case of free throws, you'd have to ask yourself questions like:

• By how many percentage points do we need to raise our average for it to make a difference in our wins and losses?
• Then you need to ask yourself how much practice time will be required to achieve that increase

You'd ask the same types of questions for other aspects and then start to structure your practice accordingly.

The problem with free throws is that it takes a very significant amount of practice to raise your percentage a small amount. In that same amount of time, you could've made much greater relative strides in rebounding, defense, etc.

In your example of driving, this focus increases the likelihood that a guard will be shooting free throws. Guards (Briscoe excepted) tend to shoot free throws better. You also gain the benefit of putting the other team's players into foul trouble, which either forces them to be less aggressive or put their best players on the bench. This helps your offense and defense later in the game.

At that point, are you better off spending time practicing free throws or working on defense, rebounding, offense, etc? Given the way those factors impact the game, and the amount of effort it takes to improve them, you're better off not spending too much time on free throws.

Can the players practice free throw shooting on their own time?

 

[TheEgyptianMagician]

I'm not saying we didn't shoot them well in the tourney this year. I'm just making the point that the game today shows just how critical it is to convert FT's at all points in the game. Nova won by 4 and although I haven't checked the stat sheet, my guess is that Nova was 19 of 20 from the line. That won the game for them.

I agree FT's are always important, my point was more subtle I guess, that our teams by and large shoot them pretty well in the tournament. Most of the complaints about freethrow shooting happen when we go 10-20 in a 30 point win in December. Watch, it will happen again next fall surely.

 

[CB3UK]

It's because it's an allocation exercise. The amount of practice time available in a given week is a fixed amount. So a big part of Cal's, or any coach's, job is determining how they will allocate that time. Any minute you spend on rebounding is a minute you can't spend on free throws or on defense.

So to decide how to split this, it becomes a matter of deciding where you think you'll get the biggest return. In the case of free throws, you'd have to ask yourself questions like:

• By how many percentage points do we need to raise our average for it to make a difference in our wins and losses?
• Then you need to ask yourself how much practice time will be required to achieve that increase

You'd ask the same types of questions for other aspects and then start to structure your practice accordingly.

The problem with free throws is that it takes a very significant amount of practice to raise your percentage a small amount. In that same amount of time, you could've made much greater relative strides in rebounding, defense, etc.

In your example of driving, this focus increases the likelihood that a guard will be shooting free throws. Guards (Briscoe excepted) tend to shoot free throws better. You also gain the benefit of putting the other team's players into foul trouble, which either forces them to be less aggressive or put their best players on the bench. This helps your offense and defense later in the game.

At that point, are you better off spending time practicing free throws or working on defense, rebounding, offense, etc? Given the way those factors impact the game, and the amount of effort it takes to improve them, you're better off not spending too much time on free throws.

So your counterargument is that it is better to focus on things such as rebounds, which may or may not even come to us and may or may not result in points scored on the ensuing possession, but free throws which simply require one to practice your follow throw in order to garner definitve points is a less valuable use of practice time? I'm going to say no. It's all important and carries equal if not more weight in deciding a games outcome.

 

[1war_rivals62997]

I'll say this , it's not always about practicing freethrows. In highschool and college I played with a few guys(bigs) that would hit them at a 80-85% clip in practice , whether they shot 100 or 500 freethrows a day but were still around 50% during games.

 

[mjj_2K]

To me it's not even simply about being able to close out close games. If we're up by 15, and could have won by 25 by hitting free throws through the course of the game, then we should have. Pitino's teams blew out a lot of squads in the 90s by virtue of great free throw shooting.

Cal's offense preaches drawing contact on driving. Why we don't stress the second part of that recipe, making free throws, is beyond me.

Would that be the 92-93 UK team, which shot worse from the FT line than the 2015-16 UK team?

Or was it the 93-94 UK team, which shot worse from the FT line than the 2015-16 UK team?

Or was it the 96-97 UK team, which shot worse from the FT line than the 2015-16 UK team?

Or was it really the John Calipari coached UK team from last season , which shot FT's better than all but one of Pitino's UK teams?

Just curious.

 

[UKnCincy_rivals]

So your counterargument is that it is better to focus on things such as rebounds, which may or may not even come to us and may or may not result in points scored on the ensuing possession, but free throws which simply require one to practice your follow throw in order to garner definitve points is a less valuable use of practice time? I'm going to say no. It's all important and carries equal if not more weight in deciding a games outcome.

Yes, it is better to focus on rebounds or offensive/defensive execution. While you'll never get 100% of rebounds, you are able to significantly increase the percentage of rebounds you do get by focusing on them. Same with forcing / reducing turnovers.

And I'll take a live ball turnover over an additional free throw any day. A turnover generally impacts three possessions. A free throw, especially if it's the first of two, doesn't. It's a discrete event. So the impact of a turnover on the final score ends up being much higher than the one point you left on the table at the line. Same can be said for rebounds.

People attribute far too much importance to free throws because of how the end of the game plays out. But you're confusing proximate cause for ultimate cause.

 

[UKnCincy_rivals]

Can the players practice free throw shooting on their own time?

Absolutely. Which is how free throw practice should be handled. It is an individual skill that requires significant amounts of repetition. And this is how most coaches handle it. They'll set a daily/weekly requirement that players need to attempt on their own.

 

[Xception]

They need to stop calling them free , maybe fans wouldn't expect to make them so much . The implication is that you don't have to do anything to get them .

 

[Elliott Tim]

They need to stop calling them free , maybe fans wouldn't expect to make them so much . The implication is that you don't have to do anything to get them .

How about rewards? What's in your pocket?