Colorado University Athletics
Brooks: Buffs Step To The FT Line - 500 Times Each
December 05, 2011 | Men's Basketball, B.G. Brooks
BOULDER - If you were wondering how long it was before the Colorado men's basketball team was back at the free throw line following a one-point defeat last week at Colorado State, here's your answer:
Not very.
After their 65-64 loss to the Rams on Wednesday night, the Buffs were scheduled to take the next day off. Plans changed, which might have been expected in the wake of CU's 16 missed free throws the previous night and 15 that were clanked two nights earlier in a two-point home win against Georgia.
Reasons for one-point losses usually can be pinpointed possession-by-possession, but at game's end 16 missed free throws offer a pretty air-tight closing statement.
So that's what CU coach Tad Boyle addressed last Thursday.
If there was a free throw line available that morning at the Coors Events Center and the new adjacent practice facility, it was occupied. Boyle had his eight top players shoot 500 free throws each. (If you're doing the math, that's 4,000 total free throws.)
There were tales of some players canning an uncanny number. Freshman Spencer Dinwiddie said senior Carlon Brown "hit something crazy, like 470 of his shots, or something like that."
Among CU's players averaging the most minutes per game, the top three free throw shooters are Brown (30 minutes; 13-of-17, 76.5 percent), Nate Tomlinson (32.6; 13-of-19, 68.4) and Dinwiddie (22.7; 16-of-22, 72.7). As a team, the Buffs are shooting 60.8 percent from the free throw line, ranking them 11th in the Pac-12 Conference and No. 296 in the NCAA stats.
Dinwiddie said he went about 400-for-500 last Thursday and that his two-for-six performance the night before still haunts him: "I feel that was a big part of why we lost. Also, I took a bad shot down the stretch. You just have to come in and work on them. The bad shot down the stretch is just decision making, but free throws . . . they're free."
By Boyle's and his staff's calculations, the eight players shooting made 83 percent on their 500 free throws each. That's a better percentage than the Buffs have shot at home (64.1), away (48.8) or at neutral sites (65.2).
The big difference - which the head guy, of course, realizes - is that last Thursday's work at the foul line was in practice.
Said Boyle: "It's not a function of us not being good free throw shooters. It's a function of concentration and confidence and doing it when the lights are on and there's pressure on."
Like other coaches, he's tried to emulate game pressure in practice by stopping drills, calling out two or three players at a time and having them shoot one-and-ones while their teammates line up along the baseline and watch.
For every miss, there's a down-and-back timed full court sprint. The pressure comes from hitting both ends of the one-and-one and saving your teammates some steps.
It's a nice way to have trips to the foul line mean something in practice, but Boyle and every other coach will concede that it falls a bit short of the real thing. It comes down to "pressure and confidence when the lights come on," Boyle said.
But the first issue to explore when a team misses 15 and 16 free throws in consecutive games is whether there are "fundamental flaws" in players' routines from the foul line. "I think shooting 83 percent over a pretty large sample size . . . that (poor shooting fundamentals) is not the issue," Boyle said.
"But it's a team thing and it's cost us two games - it cost us the Maryland game (11 missed free throws in a 78-71 loss in Puerto Rico) and the Colorado State game. Other than that, we're not talking about it, we're just trying to do something about it. You can practice it all you want, but the bottom line is when you go to the line during a game you have to step up and knock it down. It's pretty simple stuff."
RAISING (DAMIENE) CAIN: After joining the team late due to personal reasons, freshman forward Damiene Cain is expected to debut Wednesday night against Fresno State (7 p.m., Coors Events Center).
Boyle said Cain's addition will bring about a subtraction in some players' court time: "There'll be some guys' minutes that will go down a little bit. I think we'll be 10 deep then and have the opportunity to press a little more and extend our defense. One thing it does is give you options, and if guys are playing hard it gives you options. It puts the guys on the court on point a little bit more."
Cain averaged 14.4 points and 10.9 rebounds during his senior season at Harvard Westlake and was among seven honorees for the John R. Wooden High School Player of The Year in the Los Angeles area. In addition to CU, he visited Boston College and San Diego State.
Boyle will work Cain into things gradually, but he expects the 6-7, 245-pounder to be a "presence on the low post . . . his ball-screen defense will be tested in the game, but he's done a good job on that in practice. Ball screens are such a big part of college basketball, and defending the ball screens, if there's one area of our defense that has to get better that's it. But he's proven he can do that in practice."
Asked if Cain was up to speed now after missing much of the Buffs' preseason work, Boyle answered, "I don't think he's in mid-season form, but he's had enough practice and enough conditioning that I think he's ready to be thrown in the fire a little bit and see what happens."
BUFF BITS: Wednesday night's game kicks off an eight-game home stand that will carry the Buffs three games into their inaugural Pac-12 Conference season. The Pac-12 opener is on Saturday, Dec. 31 against Utah at 4 p.m. Tickets start at $10 and can be purchased at CUBuffs.com/tickets or by calling 303-49-BUFFS.
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
