Free throws so important but so frustratingly ugly

Every college basketball fan with a filled bracket and a TV knows the feeling.

Your team is at the line late in a close game, and you’re not feeling too confident. You’ve been watching college basketball teams shoot free throws all year.

You know what might be coming.

Miss. Miss.

It’s one of those mysteries of March Madness. The best athletes on the best teams assemble for the NCAA tournament and can’t make an unguarded shot from 15 feet away. Free-throw shooting among Division I teams was 69 percent last year — just 2 percent better than the high school national average — and stayed there this season.

Top seed Memphis enters this year’s tournament shooting 59.6 percent from the line. Tennessee, a No. 2 seed, is shooting 65.6 percent from the stripe. SEC West champion Mississippi State makes 64.4 percent of its free throws, an embarrassing number for coach Rick Stansbury.

“It keeps getting worse every year,” said Stansbury, whose team defeated Oregon in the NCAA tournament Friday night. “But it’s not just us. It’s a trend across America.”

Free-throw shooting just doesn’t interest athletes these days, according to several coaches, which is strange considering their importance this time of year.

The National Basketball Coaches Association studied games over a 10-year span and concluded that free throws account for 25 percent of points scored in Division I men’s basketball games. Winning teams, according to the study, score 67 percent of their points in the final minute from the free-throw line.

No team since 1950 shot less than 60 percent from the line and won the national title, which is bad news for Memphis. Connecticut is the only team since 1985 to win the national title while shooting less than 65 percent.

Tennessee fans remember how Chris Lofton drained six straight free throws to beat Virginia last year in the tournament and finished off Memphis in this year’s regular-season matchup. Michigan fans remember Rumeal Robinson making two free throws with three seconds left in overtime to win the 1989 national title, probably the most famous free throws in tournament history.

And would Tennessee’s fate in last year’s tournament be different if Xavier’s Justin Cage made his free throw with a three-point lead against top-seeded Ohio State? Cage missed, Ohio State made a 3-pointer and won in overtime. The Buckeyes went on to beat Tennessee.

And yet, according to coaches, most players spend their time after practice working on dunks and 3-point shots if they stick around at all.

“Kids nowadays just don’t understand the importance of it,” Stansbury said. “There’s too many other things that keep kids out of the gym. Kids don’t work in the offseason like they used to. Kids used to work out extra and shoot 500 free throws a day. Now, just getting them in the gym is the first thing.”

At this point in the season, it’s too late to start correcting free-throw shooting problems. Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl tried to fix his team’s problems by mixing in free-throw competitions with defensive drills. But coaches admit that good free-throw shooting is developed from March to November.

“It’s one of those things that either you shoot free throws or you can’t,” Arkansas coach John Pelphrey said.

One former SEC player did improve his free-throw shooting dramatically. Joakim Noah, who helped Florida win back-to-back national titles, shot 57.7 percent as a freshman. But his sophomore year, Noah made 73.3 percent of his attempts from the line.

“Noah had a relentless commitment and a pursuit to addressing his problems and trying to figure them out,” Florida coach Billy Donovan said. “Sometimes when it gets difficult kids will say, ‘It’s not that big of a deal.’ Other guys go beyond the expectations or means and find something inside of them. Those are the guys that improve the most.”