Will somebody please make a foul shot??!!!
December 21, 2006 11:51 pm by Big Willie StyleOklahoma State 95 - Pittsburgh 89
Aaron Gray was good. Mike Cook was good. Antonio Graves was good. Their defense was good. They played well on the road. And they lost. And there’s one reason they lost: free throws. Pitt missed 6 free throws in the final 5 minutes of regulation and the first overtime. And this is certainly something that Jamie Dixon should be up in arms about.
Pitt teams have never been good at making foul shots, and tonight’s loss was another example of why you need to be good at the most basic of basketball skills. Perhaps this is why Pitt always goes down in the NCAAs and has only won a single Big East Tournament title. When you play good teams, the games are close, and in order to win those games, you need to make your foul shots. Pitt does everything else well. They’re a deep team that has good perimeter players, and although it has been criticized recently, they do play very good defense to the point it shocks you when other teams shoot well against them. But they don’t shoot free throws well. From Ontario Lett, to Brandin Knight, to Chris Taft to now Aaron Gray. If Pitt expects to live up to their lofty expectations, Jamie Dixon better have that team working on their free throws. Otherwise they’ll be the same old Pitt.
4 Responses to “Will somebody please make a foul shot??!!!”
I couldn’t agree more. I saw their game against Wisconsin this weekend. They played well in that game, too, with the exception of not reacting well to Butch going nuts on them. This past week must have been a very frustrating week for Pittsburgh fans. They clearly have a good team, but they keep losing games I really think they can win.
Poor free throw shooting has been a downfall of several Big East teams–not just Pitt. G’town, Syracuse, Cincinnati, and Marquette are frequent offenders.
In fact, as a conference, the Big East is shooting a combined 69.2% from the foul line. Compare that to the NBA, which is criticized incessantly for its poor shooters, and you’d find that the Big East is 7 percentage points worse (NBA FT% is 76.4%).
Granted, NBA players are professionals. But at some point, you have to say that a 15 foot shot is a 15 foot shot no matter what level bball you play.
Big Willie Style is right. If you want to determine what prompted your team to lose, the first place to look is typically the free throw line.
[…] « Will somebody please make a foul shot??!!! […]
[…] 12 and a half minutes. That’s how long it took UCONN to make a jump shot tonight. From three, UCONN shot 2-13. Heck, they shot worse from the free throw line (10-23 for 43.5%) than Pittsburgh shot from the field (20-45 for 44.4%). You have to make those free throws. The days of Rashard Anderson, Ben Gordon, and Richard Hamilton are gone. […]
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