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Free throws

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vtcwbuff

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As usual the team's early season FT percentage is kinda' weak - ranked 143rd. Not to worry, it's always this way early on. However, does anyone know a reason why Nurse would shoot FTs from 2' behind the line? If she has a reason to do that it ain't working because she's barely making half her attempts.

Check out her missed FT's in the ND game.
 
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As usual the team's early season FT percentage is kinda' weak - ranked 143rd. Not to worry, it's always this way early on. However, does anyone know a reason why Nurse would shoot FTs from 2' behind the line?
Yeah, you have to keep your two feet behind the line. :D
 
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I assume that we're probably not going to dominate this statistic this year.

Kia Nurse has shot 28 free throws in 186 minutes - a rate of 6.02 attempts per 40 minutes.
Gabby Williams has shot 15 free throws in 86 minutes - a rate of 6.97 attempts per 40 minutes.

Those two are the most likely to shoot free throws for every minute they're on the floor, while still having enough minutes to matter. Their combined FT% is 49%. Something to work on, ladies. ;)
 
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They really need to clean this up, especially the front end of 1 and 1s.

Poor free throw shooting has already hurt them in the Stanford loss and it's altogether possible that come tournament time, it could mean the difference between an premature exit and a title. Giving away a boatload of points at the line often comes back to bite a team and in crunch time is often fatal.
 

HGN

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I fear that this could be our achilles heel.....If we could shoot at least 70% there is no game that we couldn't win going away. But it seems like we are destined to be in the 60's. And in a tight game this could hurt us. On front-end 1 and 1's , we give away 5-7 points every game.

If we could get that FT percentage up it would add 10 points to our Points-per-game avg....And make this team virtually unbeatable.
 
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Nurse and Tuck between them are averaging 11.07 attempts/40 min. They are essentially replacing Hartley and Dolson who last year averaged 6.83 attempts/40 min. Nurse and Tuck are making 7.19/40 mi at a 65% clip while Dolson/hartley made 5.02 for a 73.5 clip. Most of the difference in percentage can be attributed to Nurse in the ND game.
The good news is we are getting to the line more as Nurse, Tuck and Gabby are inclined to take it to the hoop. The shooting percentage will sort itself out and we will get more points from the free throw line this year.
 

meyers7

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I fear that this could be our achilles heel.....If we could shoot at least 70% there is no game that we couldn't win going away. But it seems like we are destined to be in the 60's. And in a tight game this could hurt us. On front-end 1 and 1's , we give away 5-7 points every game.

If we could get that FT percentage up it would add 10 points to our Points-per-game avg....And make this team virtually unbeatable.
Well we are at almost 69%, so we are almost there.
 

HGN

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Well we are at almost 69%, so we are almost there.
Meyers, you are correct. But its misses on those front-end 1-and-1's that's causing me heartburn. If we hit those that's 5-7 more points/gm. Since we seem to be doing more scoring in the paint we are getting more opportunities at the line. We need that FT percentage to go up...IMHO
 

meyers7

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Meyers, you are correct. But its misses on those front-end 1-and-1's that's causing me heartburn. If we hit those that's 5-7 more points/gm. Since we seem to be doing more scoring in the paint we are getting more opportunities at the line. We need that FT percentage to go up...IMHO
True dat. Luckily I take Rantinidine.
 
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Don't want to single any player out but if memory serves me right (Don't bet the baby on it!) didn't Coach Ollie credit the men's free throw shooting as one of the reasons the guys won it all last year? Not concerned about the women at this juncture but if they don't improve by March then we should start sweating when any player steps up during crunch time with less than 70% free throw average, especially, those who handle the ball at the end of the game. Maybe our mantra should then be ... Pass the ball to Kaleena ...Pass the ball to Kaleena ... Pass the ball to Kaleena ... Well, guess you know how I feel!
 
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She could be color blinded, that was why she stepped upon sidelined a couple of times as well. :)

I do not think the percentage will sort out by itself. Her FT percentage has never been high int he past couple of years. what makes one think that it will greatly improved by in a few month.

Another thought, had the FT percentage were better, UConn might have won over Stanford.(Stanford did not shoot FT very well in that game either)

As usual the team's early season FT percentage is kinda' weak - ranked 143rd. Not to worry, it's always this way early on. However, does anyone know a reason why Nurse would shoot FTs from 2' behind the line? If she has a reason to do that it ain't working because she's barely making half her attempts.

Check out her missed FT's in the ND game.
 

Icebear

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Too much bending over and too much head movement because of that.
 

Zorro

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Do you think the time may come when opponents play "grab a Gab"?
 

DobbsRover2

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Last year after a slowish start for the first 9 game the UConn FT% was 70.3%, and it finished at 75%. So a nice 4.7% gain over the latter parts of the season.

This year after 7 games it's a bit lower. Would 70% make everyone happy? That would mean UConn had hit 2 more FTs to be 96-137 instead of 94-137. Two more FTs are not much unless you decide they must be applied to the Stanford game and maybe get another OT, but to be fair, only 2/7th of a point should be designated for the Stanford game.

Far more serious items to worry about would be a sharp drop in FG% or 3-pt FG%, or on a pride basis maybe KLM no longer leading the nation in 3s per game at 4.67 and slipping below 59%.

FT% tends to be overrated. Last year Baylor shot about 2% worse than UConn at the FT line, even though Sims was an excellent striper at almost 81%. I don't think the Bears were fretting that much about the 16 missing FT points (less than 1 point every 2 games) they would have gotten if they shot like the Huskies because they still made 173 more points at the line, letting quantity overwhelm quality. But the Bears would have loved to have been able to make up the 6% difference in FG% or, most usefully, the -15 differential in opponents ppg compared to the Huskies. Those are stats that really matter and mean bucketfuls of points.
 

psconn

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Kia's aggressive style will put her on the line a lot. She really does need to get better from the line to take best advantage of it. I have no doubt that she and the coaches are well aware of that fact.
 

vtcwbuff

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Last year UConn scored 486 points from the free throw line - 250 points more than their opponents. FTs accounted for about 15% of their total points scored. Not a big deal when you have a 34 point scoring margin but obviously FTs can be the difference between a win or a loss in a close game.

My point was that while UConn usually starts the season slowly at the FT line, Nurse's FTs are reminiscent of Tina Charles' freshman year - not as ugly as Charles from a mechanics standpoint but the results are pretty much the same.

You would think somebody would tell her that she can stand closer.
 
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Free throw percentage alone can be a deceiving number and like so many other statistics, doesn't tell the whole story.

If you blow the front of a 1 & 1, you don't get the second, yet that doesn't affect percentage, but it DOES mean you just blew 2 points.

There is no excuse for a high level basketball team to shoot under 75% overall from the line, in my opinion.
 

DobbsRover2

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Free throw percentage alone can be a deceiving number and like so many other statistics, doesn't tell the whole story.

If you blow the front of a 1 & 1, you don't get the second, yet that doesn't affect percentage, but it DOES mean you just blew 2 points.

There is no excuse for a high level basketball team to shoot under 75% overall from the line, in my opinion.
Missing the first of a 1-and-1 does not of course mean you blew 2 points unless you're a 100% FT shooter, but if you blew that first one, you're not. Shots average out over a season, so on average UConn probably missed about 25% of their one-and-ones, and it certainly didn't cost them any games.

Only 28 of the 343 WCBB programs shot 75% or better last year, so more than 92% of the programs are defective at the line if 75% is used as the litmus test of acceptability. Heck Stanford got to the FF shooting under 70%, and Middle Tennessee won 29 games shooting 62.7% and Navy won 24 shooting 61.5%. Only 10 of the 64 teams in the NCAA tournament shot 75% or better, and only 36% of the 28 teams that hit the mark made it to the tourney.

So yes, you do want to make your FTs at a reasonable rate, but coaches probably feel they have more important items to use the brunt of their practice time on, things like hitting 3s and layups, effective passing, and pulling down rebounds, and setting good picks, and playing pressure defense, and . . . .
 

Zorro

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I just did a little digging on the topic of free throws. I looked at the ft%s of Tina Charles, Charde Houston, Swin Cash and Ashley Battle over their four years at UConn. Of the four, Battle was the only one whose ft average as a senior was significantly better than her average as a freshman; actually she had a big jump of over ten % between her soph and jr years, and then regressed slightly as a sr. My memory told me that Tina had improved greatly over her UConn career; my memory lied (as it so often does). She was not significantly better as a sr than as a frosh. All of which goes to support my previous opinion; when it comes to shooting freebies, practice is simply no help. Either you are a deadeye (like KML) or your aren't (as with KN). If there was indeed some way to improve a player's ft percentage, Geno or Pat or Muffett or Jeff or someone would have found it long ago. If KN is a 67 % ft shooter, we are just going to have to live with that. (Wilt Chamberlain had a pretty good career, in spite of being totally unable to hit freebies.) She does enough other things superbly to more than make up for this one shortcoming. It has nothing at all to do with desire, good intentions, "choking", or anything other than some native ability to shoot freebies accurately. Incidenally, four players is not much of a sample, so someone may be able to find stats that disprove my contention.
 
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I think your conclusion does not have any scientific bases. First, how big is your sample? Just pick a few samples does not really yield a convincing conclusion. Secondly, it will also be interesting to look at stats at other teams, uconn coaches might not be the best in teaching FT. Basically you are telling people on study get to college, or reaches 18 YO their FT cannot be improved any more. If your stats does holds true, you can probably get it published in a statistics journal.:)

I just did a little digging on the topic of free throws. I looked at the ft%s of Tina Charles, Charde Houston, Swin Cash and Ashley Battle over their four years at UConn. Of the four, Battle was the only one whose ft average as a senior was significantly better than her average as a freshman; actually she had a big jump of over ten % between her soph and jr years, and then regressed slightly as a sr. My memory told me that Tina had improved greatly over her UConn career; my memory lied (as it so often does). She was not significantly better as a sr than as a frosh. All of which goes to support my previous opinion; when it comes to shooting freebies, practice is simply no help. Either you are a deadeye (like KML) or your aren't (as with KN). If there was indeed some way to improve a player's ft percentage, Geno or Pat or Muffett or Jeff or someone would have found it long ago. If KN is a 67 % ft shooter, we are just going to have to live with that. (Wilt Chamberlain had a pretty good career, in spite of being totally unable to hit freebies.) She does enough other things superbly to more than make up for this one shortcoming. It has nothing at all to do with desire, good intentions, "choking", or anything other than some native ability to shoot freebies accurately. Incidenally, four players is not much of a sample, so someone may be able to find stats that disprove my contention.
 
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It is probably not important in majority of the games. But it does make a difference in a closely contested game. One might say that it cost uconn a game this season over Stanford.(FT is definitely not a reason on the top of the list for losing that game.) however, if the FT had been better, they could have won that game despite of the deficiency in other area.
Missing the first of a 1-and-1 does not of course mean you blew 2 points unless you're a 100% FT shooter, but if you blew that first one, you're not. Shots average out over a season, so on average UConn probably missed about 25% of their one-and-ones, and it certainly didn't cost them any games.
 
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UConn. Men won a championship because of their free point shooting. Maybe Geno should ask Ollie to borrow the tape they used to practice with, if Ollie is not using it this year, he should too.
 
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