Written By Sam Ekstrom
The free throw is not the easiest shot in basketball like some may think. It’s not a point-blank lay-up or a dunk (for those among us who can live above the rim). But a free throw is, however, the only shot in basketball that is, by definition, uncontested.
Fans go to all sorts of lengths to prevent players from making these (far from) free throws. Some dance in speedos. Some mimic sword fights. At Williams Arena, known as The Barn, students typically hold up large cut-outs of farm animals when opposing teams head to the line. They’ve only had moderate success with their cardboard distractions. Opposing Big Ten teams are shooting 73 percent from the line, which is an average requisite of the upper half of the conference.
The Gophers, on the other hand, haven’t been so fortunate when shooting free throws on the road. They currently sit at 56 percent away from home – well below the lowest free throw average in the conference. “When you lose four games by a total of one or two possessions, it crushes you,” said head coach Richard Pitino.
In five of the Gophers’ six Big Ten losses, the point differential could have been made up with a handful of missed throws becoming made free throws. In games against Ohio State and Iowa at home – where Minnesota shot a respectable 74 percent from the line overall – they missed vital free throws down the stretch. Against Ohio State, freshman Nate Mason bricked the go-ahead free throw with under a minute to go, and the Gophers wound up losing in overtime. Against Iowa, senior Elliott Eliason and Mason each missed the front end of 1-and-1’s that could have extended the lead with under three minutes remaining. Minnesota eventually lost on a last-second shot by Iowa’s Jake Uthoff.
Mason, a sharpshooter by all accounts and the top 3-point marksman on the squad, is shooting under 64 percent from the free throw line this season. And as one of Minnesota’s biggest culprits from the free throw line, he has made amends to fix the problem, shooting approximately 350 free throws per day since the Iowa loss.
“I started watching film to see why I was missing free throws,” said Mason. “Sometimes I pull my hand back; sometimes I follow through. So I'm just trying to keep the same motion and stay consistent with my follow through.”
Mason has a simple routine: Eyes on the rim, right foot in front of the left, dribble once, dribble twice, flick the wrist. Oddly, the motion hasn’t provided Mason with good results.
“Very weird,” said Pitino of Mason’s issues at the line. “He's tough. He wants to hit the big shot. He's a good shooter. He's just got to get out of that rut a little bit.
“There's no reason why he shouldn't be a better free throw shooter, so that's been a big, big, big focus.”
After not attempting a free throw against Nebraska, Mason went 7 for 8 at the line in Minnesota’s 79-71 win over Illinois – a step in the right direction.
But in the same game, senior guard Andre Hollins struggled again from the stripe, perhaps the only blemish on his 28-point performance. Hollins is 8 for 15 in his last two games and a career-low 73 percent on the season. Hollins led the team in free throw percentage two of the past three seasons but is undergoing a senior slump at the charity stripe.
“We're actually a really, really good free-throw shooting team,” said Hollins.
“The thing is not psyching yourself out on the free throw line, so that's the biggest thing. Don't psyche yourself out. Just do what you did to get here. All of us are good free throw shooters, but the numbers haven't shown that so far.”
The Gophers were a good free-throw shooting team in Coach Pitino’s first season and had many of the same characters on the floor. It puts the young coach in a position where he doesn’t want to give the issue more attention than it might deserve, sort of like the Minnesota Wild and their terrible power play streak. As Pitino says, much of the free throw process is mental. “You bring it up a lot, guys start thinking about it, so you don't want to bring too much light to it. You want to work on it,” Pitino said.
The coach admits that simulating a pressure-filled situation is difficult in practice, though he has done his best to train the team to hit freebies under duress.
“Like [Thursday] at the end of practice, I had Maroon and Gold separate,” said Pitino, “and if Maroon made two, Gold ran, and if Gold missed one, Maroon ran.”
“Lately he's been blowing whistles, honking horns and everything,” said junior Carlos Morris, who acknowledges that road crowds have gotten in his team’s head. “All types of distractions in there just to get our mind focused every game.”
If there’s any ray of hope for a team with a 2-6 conference record, it’s that they have had a chance in all but one game down the stretch. And free throw shooting, which has plagued them time and again, is a very correctable flaw.
The Big Ten is packed with parity with 13 of 14 teams having two or more losses in conference. With 10 conference games to go, an improved free throw touch could go a long way towards climbing back into tournament contention.
“You've just got to knock them down,” said Hollins. “They're free.”
Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket and a play-by-play broadcaster in Burnsville, Minn. Hear him on 105 The Ticket Sunday mornings from 8-10 a.m. on “The Wake Up Call.” Follow him on Twitter @SamEkstrom for further insights.