Last post-season UK shot 85/126 for 67.4% from the line. That is not terrible, but not good either. The national title game against UCONN was the only real horrendous performance, although there was another 6/11 kinda clunker in there against Michigan in the Elite 8.
The point is...you can overcome missing a few you should not with 5 out of 11 (Michigan) but if you take 24, you cannot miss 11 of them (like against UCONN). I'll also note it only takes one bad game to cost a team a title game....and FT shooting is not the only factor, and it never is honestly.
I remember in 2011 we shot 4/12 from the FT line against UCONN, but also got screwed on several key calls (like last year a well), Brandon Knight went all Kobe/Iveron on UK shooting the ball like 26 times (after UK got to the FInal Four with balanced and shared shooting responsibilities), etc. Yes, it is easy to say "If we went 6/12 even we win and probably win the national title" but I thin that is a flawed, narrowminded view on the game of basketball.
Free throws are huge though, no argument there. You can argue it was the #1 factor UK lost to UCONN both times, but it was not the ONLY reason. UK's inability to take the lead, and score in the half court last season was especially pathetic against UCONN. UK missed tons of wide open 3's, and did a bunch of other stupid stuff and had a lot of possessions in a row down 1-2 points and kept turning it over or missing shots.
I digress, I do not want to think about these games anymore.
