Free Throws difference in game

[LetItRide]

AZ- (24)-32. 75%
Utah- (10)-21. 47%
14 point spread. Plus 11 more attempts and we are at home?

Everything else was even.

Refs played a role as well.

Great game.

[chinngiskhaan]

47% as a team is embarrassing. No excuse for some two hands and all 10 fingers to miss more than 50% of their foul shots.

I shot a basketball for the first time in years a week or so ago, and without warmup I made my first 12 free throws. Smith has relied on his athleticism his entire life and now it’s biting him in the ass.

I cannot fathom how someone plays basketball for hours a day from the time they are a little kid, and they don’t ever take the time to learn how to shoot a proper free throw.

Back when I played regularly I could make 8/10 with my damned eyes closed.

There is no excuse for this other than a cumulative lack of effort over years of ignoring the most fundamental basketball skill.

[Ute Dub]

Your assignment is to run 10 “ladders” or “suicides”, then shoot 2 free throws, and repeat that cycle 5 times and report back.

[AZUTE]

Please don’t go Zoob and blame the Refs.

Utah fought hard but just doesn’t have the horses right now.

Make FTs and it’s a different game.

[LetItRide]

Not zoobish. Watched game with non Ute fans and they were in complete agreement.
We lost on FTs but the refs played a huge role in calls and no calls( blatant push in back to get rebound, Keitas blocks etc.).

[RustyShackleford]

Literal zoob reffing the game. Mike littlewood. Never should have been reffing this game.

[The Miami Ute]

Unbelievable…

MIKE LITTLEWOOD

[Minnesota Ute]

WTF?? Seriously, that’s troubling. Isn’t it the home teams job to hire the ref crews for home games? If it’s a league function, just one more reason to see the P12 in the rearview.

[The Miami Ute]

Yeap. One of the referees last night was BYU’s baseball manager for a decade. I guess that because he’s no longer associated with BYU no one thought it was a big deal.

[EagleMountainUte]

Ignoring the disparity but 47%!! This is the kind of s**t I am sick of seeing in a stat sheet.

FREE THROWS!! Make them. Coach kids to make them!!

[UtesRule]

The disparity of free throws attempted is not nearly as significant as the disparity in free throw percentage made.

I’m tired of hearing Coach Smith say his team is a good free throw shooting team, when they clearly are NOT!!

Missed free throws cost the Utes this game and at least one other conference game this year (at Stanford comes to mind).

[Ute Dub]

Of the 11 missed, Deivon missed 5 and Brandon missed 4. Deivon is shooting 60% on the year, Brandon 70%. We do have some better shooters on the team, but we’re not an especially strong team at getting to the rim.

[utefansince79]

At halftime when teams came back out for shooting practice, Devon spent all the time practicing throws. I watched him and while not making all of them, he made more than he missed during that time. After going 0-4 in the first half, he made 2 of 3 after the break (and his miss spun around and came out).

One can’t control what officials call and don’t call, but when you are at the line attempting an uncontested 15 foot shot, no one in the building except the shooter (well maybe home town fans can try to distract the visiting shooter) is responsible for whether that shot goes in or not.

[Rick]

It would be one thing if it was just a bad night at the line but this team has stunk at free throws all season long. Back in the stone age when I played the sport, our coach would make us stay after practice and shoot 100 free throws before we could leave. If you shot poorly from the line during the games that week you had to shoot even more after our Saturday practice. It sucked but you improved. Why can’t we improve? It is a fairly easy thing to improve with practice. I am sorry but this and our defense are the two things I keep harping on with Smith’s teams since he has been here.

I will say that I am proud of our guys last night and their fight. I saw some bad calls but I also saw some times that Utah fouled and got away with it. You cannot control the refs. You can make free throws and you can play defense. If I were Smith, I would focus on those two things almost exclusively.

[EagleMountainUte]

Terrible road team and bad free throw shooting. People want to say it means mentally weak team. It just shows bad coaching to me.

[Minnesota Ute]

The interesting thing is that we got worse. I did some numbers on this in another post and i dont want to look it up, but we were like close to 70% before jan 1, and like just over 50% since.

That said, agree they cant and shouldnt say “we are a good freethrow shooting team”. That is provably and objectively false. You can say “we have the potential…”. You can say “we have the skills to be…”. You can say “there is no good reason we are not…”. But good, is >70%. You are NOT that

[D T]

Got absolutely crushed at the FT line.

But the good news is, our WBB team is about to lay the wood on OSU!!

[RustyShackleford]

There is literally better FT shooting at any church pick up ball sessions on Thursday nights. WTF