Mailbag: What can UVA do about its continued woeful free-throw shooting?

Chris: love your reporting. I have a suggestion for Tony related to UVA basketball’s struggles at the free throw line. One of the inventors of sports psychology happens to reside in Charlottesville – Dr. Bob Rotella. How about a session with him at the next practice?

Greg

I don’t think this is the first time a reader has suggested Dr. Bob Rotella as a possible fix for Virginia’s dramatic issues with free-throw shooting, which came to a head in last night’s overtime win over Boston College in the ACC Tournament.

Not only was Virginia 8-of-18 at the line in the 66-60 win, but in a key stretch in the final minutes of regulation, the ‘Hoos left eight points off the board with misses.

That was reminiscent of the infamous 1-of-11 effort at the line in the 49-47 win over Wake Forest last month, in which Virginia needed a last-second defensive stop to preserve a win that should have been by double-digits.

We’ve known about the issue all season – Virginia was 24-of-39 at the stripe in the season-opening 80-50 win over Tarleton State in November.

UVA is shooting 63.9 percent at the line this season, which ranks eighth from the bottom in D1.

Compounding the issue is that the style of play doesn’t create a lot of free-throw opportunities. The 14.0 attempts per game also rank eighth from the bottom in D1 this season.

What stands out is that there’s just one guy, Isaac McKneely, shooting above 80 percent on the season – McKneely is shooting 87.3 percent.

And then, just two other guys – Reece Beekman (75.0 percent) and Jake Groves (72.0 percent) are above the 70 percent mark.

So, getting to the issue at hand, yeah, a good therapist, at the least, would seem to be in order.

Ryan Dunn, for example, a 53.3 percent shooter on the season, seems to have solid mechanics, but also seems to be full of negative thoughts when he steps up to the line, almost like he looks like he’s thinking, don’t airball this one.

Dunn had back-to-back games in November in which he went 5-of-6 and 8-of-9 at the line. Then he airballed a free throw in the West Virginia game, and it’s been downhill from there.

Since that airball, Dunn has shot 23-of-52 (44.2 percent) at the line.

Jordan Minor‘s issue seems to me to be mechanical in nature.

His follow-through has his hands veering off to the right.

Seems like a simple fix there.

The other misses last night felt like contagion.

All of this can be addressed by Dr. Rotella, it would seem to me.