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Message: [QUOTE="auror, post: 3294309, member: 1329"] Hurley routinely has his teams ranked over 300th in defensive free throw rate (as in many more free throws given to the other team than average). It's a common thread. 6 of his 9 D1 teams have ranked over 300th (and the best was 233rd). In contrast, Calhoun's first 3 title teams were 12th, 1st, and 5th in the country in the other direction. It's not necessarily a defect, but certainly a systemic tradeoff. I think it's partly Hurley's focus on defensive on ball aggression and running hard at guys on the perimeter to prevent 3s, leading to other defenders needing to rotate and help in disadvantageous positions when the primary gets beat. It's nice to prevent 3s, but at the cost of FTs is a bad statistical tradeoff (can't fast break in retaliation off a FTA in addition to the bad points per shot numbers). Probably partly a lack of overwhelming athleticism compared to Calhoun's teams that didn't need to foul to recover. Maybe even more than athleticism it's about height, where Hurley historically has played a lot of 3 guard lineups and we were particularly small last year for a UConn team; Small teams likely foul more often on rebounds and guarding the rim. Also partly Cobb and Yakwe were egregious, especially defending high hedges in the PnR lol. Edit to add- Looked it up. Hurley's never started 2 players above 6'8" simultaneously except for last year, but Polley basically doesn't count since he plays so much smaller than his height. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach