Mark Pope takes up for his team, as he should. That is what a coach does. But he spoke out on missed free throws and layups recently, and his defense of the free-throw misses just doesn't hold water.
"Been a little bit hit or miss on free throws. ...Sometimes that's who's getting to the line more often. Are you getting your best free-throw shooters to the line? Sometimes it's a little bit of a fatigue issue. We've been playing some of our guys really, really long minutes. ...Really, the biggest impact on finishing is having the discretion to take high-quality shots at the rim."
Now, the missed layups are absolutely a factor with shot selection. Time and time again, a Kentucky player just drives straight to the rim and hopes for a foul call as they jump into a body and throw it up. That doesn't work very often, and for Kentucky, even less so.
Kentucky is shooting 55.4 percent at layups this season, according to KSR.
There is not much you can do to fix that other than just take better shots. But free throws being caused by fatigue is a weak argument; let's dive deep and see.
Kentucky's minutes per game aren't all that different than other high major teams
Against Florida, Kentucky played Otega Oweh (71% FT) and Denzel Aberdeen 37 minutes (80% FT), and Chandler (82% FT) 34, no other player hit more than 25 minutes. Those 3 guys were a combined 8-12, or 66%. The rest of the team was 10-13. So, you think well maybe he has a point. But let's look at some other players who log heavy minutes and where they stand from the line.
Player/School | Minutes Per Game | Free throw % |
|---|---|---|
Christian Bliss | 39.4 | 82.9 |
Christian Anderson | 38.8 | 77.1 |
Cruz Davis | 38.2 | 81.9 |
Jordan Riley | 37.3 | 68.9 |
Amir Lindsey | 37.2 | 79.5 |
Jake Heidbreder | 36.9 | 89.8 |
Jeremiah Quigley | 36.8 | 78 |
Michael James | 36.8 | 90.9 |
Justyn Fernandez | 36.7 | 89.3 |
The top 9 players all play more minutes per game, and 5 shoot the same or better than Chandler and Aberdeen, while all but 1 shoot better than Oweh. So, blaming the minutes played doesn't hold up at all.
Free throws are mental and technique. You get in the gym, and you practice until you become good at it. It starts when you are little, and that is the real problem. Players simply don't practice free throws anymore; they worry about crab dribbles, dribbling two balls at once, and looking like Steph Curry, who, by the way, has shot it 91.2% from the line over his NBA career.
While tracking advanced free throw percentage is harder in college, 82games compiled data showing that "In over 5% of games the losing team would have won had it merely hit 78% of its free throws. That's basically saying on average a team could pick up two wins a season!"
Taking a look at some of Kentucky's losses you can see the real impact:
UNC- 3-point loss, 5 missed free throws
Missouri- 5-point loss, 7 missed free throws
Florida- 9-point loss, 10 missed free throws
No team is going to be perfect from the line, but hit 2 more in each of those games and in big situations, and the rest of the game changes.
The lesson is, if you want to help your team win games then get to the line and make them.