My mailbag question: compared to other Top 25 teams, does UVA, this season, have a free-throw shooting problem, and if so, what can that be attributed to?
K.W.
Yes, Virginia, you have a free-throw shooting problem.
The ‘Hoos, per Sports-Reference.com, currently rank 290th (egad!) in the nation in free-throw percentage, at 67.1 percent.
This is the worst (by 10 percentage points!) of anybody in the Top 25.
The good news is that attempts per game have been trending up in recent years. The 2018-2019 national title team averaged 15.7 attempts per game (shooting 74.4%, 51st nationally); the 2020-2021 team averaged 11.5 per game (shooting 81.6%, third nationally.).
This year, the group is averaging 17.0 attempts per game.
Trying my hand at analysis, one issue for this year’s team in terms of the percentage is who’s getting to the line.
Freshman big Blake Buchanan leads the team in free-throw attempts per game, at 3.5, and he is shooting just 57.1 percent.
Notably, on Saturday, Buchanan was 1-of-4 at the stripe, with a pair of airballs among his misses.
Next up is Ryan Dunn, who averages 3.3 attempts per game, and is shooting 69.7 percent.
Dunn also had an airball free-throw miss.
Airballs on free throws: just unacceptable.
The team’s two best free-throw shooters are Jake Groves (84.6%, 1.3 attempts/game) and Isaac McKneely (80.0%, 1.1 attempts/game).
You’d like your point guard to be at least 80 percent, so, a little work to do there.
The bigger issue here seems to be, the team is getting to the line at a good clip (good news!), but the guys who get to the line most frequently aren’t the best shooters (mid …).
Here’s where I’ll pull the limited rank that I can – as the Spring 1994 UVA intramural free-throw champ.
(I wish I was making that up; I got a shirt and my name on the wall of IM champs at Mem Gym for however long that lasted. This T-shirt and name on the wall situation for being able to make free throws is the highlight of my competitive sports career.)
From experience, free throws are a function of focus and fitness.
Buchanan and Dunn both have good shooting strokes, so it’s not a matter of needing to fix anything mechanically.
They just need reps.
I don’t get to the home games as early as I used to, but my advice would be to encourage guys to get out on the floor mega-early to just shoot, shoot, shoot, to the point of it almost being ridiculous, to build the muscle memory needed to improve those percentages.
The fitness part isn’t just physical; the hard part to in-game free throws is going from frenetic cardiovascular activity to then doing something that rewards the ability to slow down, take a deep breath and tap into the muscle memory of tens of thousands of free throws past.
Maybe a consult with a sports mental fitness expert would be a help here, is my suggestion.
Photo: Mike Ingalls/AFP
High stop my perch in 306 section at the game Saturday night, I couldn’t notice there were a few times our legendary coach Tony Bennett showed some fire. I know there isn’t a metric for speeches and showing raw emotion, but I wonder if this was the salt that made the soup last night.
I often have been critical of the sometimes boring offense and tempo. Even joke that Tony Bennett often gives cookie-cutter interviews that are boring and highly predictable. But he does show class. Just think about the grace and humility he showed after the not-so-good history-making game in 2018.
As thus team still looks for a consistent identity (and hopefully some rebounds), I wonder if a little extra sauce from Tony Bennett would be a good thing. Many of us know and respect him as a man of faith who has rarely (if ever) said the wrong thing. I’m not saying he needs to turn into a tool like Bob Knight or Tom Izzo, but seeing him get a little worked up more regularly would ignite the fans. Plus it makes for good media.
I’m happy we have the coach we do, who is the epitome of “who he is,” but maybe, just maybe, a little more show of emotion will give these ‘Hoos a little nudge.
When your style isn’t built to come from behind, this might be an immeasurable metric just for fun, that may just get these guys over the hump.
B.P.
The players tell us that he has been showing more fire in practices the past couple of years.
Putting on my armchair psychology hat, I would read into that: he misses the feeling that we all had in 2019 from winning the national title, and he wants to get us back there.
COVID did a lot of things to change the world we live in, and not for the better.
For UVA Athletics, it killed the momentum of our basketball and football programs.
The big bump in recruiting that should have come from winning the hoops title in ’19 was stalled, and the big bump in recruiting that we should have seen from the Orange Bowl berth in ’19 not only stalled, but Bronco Mendenhall left, Tony Elliott decided to tear it down and rebuild from scratch, and we’ve been 6-16 in the past two seasons.
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