Free throws can be the hardest shot to make in basketball. Itās just you, all alone. If you miss, you canāt blame it on anyone. When youāre shooting a jumper during the game, if you miss thereās no embarassment because maybe it was that defenderās arm that was hacking you or throwing you off balance. There are a lot of excuses you can use. Free throws are a lot more than just practicing them. Being nervous can screw up your whole percentage. There was a good NBA guard named Mike Newlin, who was from Yale I think, who said that free throw percentage reveals which players give a damn about the game, and which ones donāt, but I donāt think thatās true. It can just reveal who gets stressed when they have to go to the FT line. Consequently, some great players donāt want the ball, because they donāt want to get fouled, because they know theyāll miss. Thatās true in the NBA even. These are just what Iāve seen from watching players. If youāre afraid to go to the FT line, that ball is not going in. LOL. UVa used to work with a sports psychologist on shooting, and it did help. I think heās retired by now, but Iām sure there are other sports psychologists at UVa. Might as well. Have nothing to lose by seeing one!
Free throws for me were an opportunity to get more points/ stats for myself. Gotta be selfish at the line. Not scared
Exactly this. You call a TO before iMac shots. Get everyone on the same page. Mind boggling how Tony nor any of our 52 assistants worked that out.
If handled reasonably well, using 3 fouls to take up time and not allowing any kind of 3PA turns the situation from a challenging 3 pointer for the Wolfies to a near miracle needed for them.
Iām pretty sure that we had a similar scenario vs Purdue at the end where Kihei tried to foul a guy dribbling up the court but the refs didnāt call it and the Purdue player ended up throwing the ball out of bounds.
Since weāre such a fragile FT shooting, was Tony worrying that would ice IMac?! Ha
Glad I watched this one on tape delay. Plenty of time to get over it and didnāt go to bed angry.
We all knew FTs would bite us at some point. But with our two best getting the chances, this one really stings. Just hope we get a chance in the NCAAT
Ha just the opposite actually. Take a breath get a snip of water, everyone hyping you up during the TO only builds his confidence.
Some shine in the spotlight, others wilt.
Not sure if itās more impressive that we were 10-0 in these games (until last night), or more impressive(ly bad) that we barely shot 50% in these situations
Honest question: do you think UVA should fire Tony Bennett?
Youāll probably say no but I wonāt believe you
Oh, and the not showing up during wins but piling on in losses is incredibly lame. You wait for us to lose so you can regurgitate the same talking points and dunk on anyone that isnāt as miserable about the state of our program as you. Weāre all frustrated right now.
Last night defied our prior results this season in so many ways.
We lost even though we:
- shot well from 3 overall and got our looks
- shot piss poor from FT line down the stretch
- played good D overall and didnāt do dumb shit (like hedging way out)
- kept our wits about us almost the whole game
lol and cry
Agree with you here. We have loaded up on four star recruits. Talent is there but itās pretty poorly constructed. We have a huge hole in the front court.
I really struggle understanding the mental issues that have plagued us for most of the past 5 years shooting the ball. Some is personnel and just not having enough shooters to spread defenses thin, but there seems to be more going on there.
Obviously donāt want TB going anywhere but there is plenty of reason to believe this is false. Post Ralph-JJ era is more indicative of program potential than the post Jones-Leitao era. A lot of that was because we werenāt investing in the program properly at the time.
One bright spot - I did not hear DJ Horneās name called out once last night. We must have blanketed him. Not that it matters, in the endā¦
He committed about 32 fouls that werenāt called.
Hopefully ok to do this, but bringing together two coherent theories from other threads ā¦
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Tony likes to put together an exact roster of complementary pieces. Heās great at it. But the 2019 exodus and covid and transfer portal has made that less possible (and you can argue PT for young guys, etc). We havenāt been as flexible taking talent when there is overlap with existing skill sets.
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It got easier to secure top 100 talent after natty. So we went for guys who were first to jump on board. Didnāt eval as closely and it led to us missing the diamonds in the rough difference makers like Brogdon and Hunter.
You overlay that with having a younger and newer team this year and voila. Not my theories but both together tells a pretty coherent and convincing story.
I think that makes sense. As to point 1 I think we have a good complement of guards on the roster (though the minutes distribution seems off). The front court issues are a product of transfers. As much as Shedrick is missed, Papi would have been a nice situational player for us this year, some of the jumbo bigs that have hurt us in games would have had a tougher time moving Papi around.
Two also makes sense given the extended recruiting battles weāve lost to Duke the last few years.
Maybe he would have fouled had Isaac not fucked up the end of the first half ā fouled, then let his guy by him for a buzzer layup.
He was playing on a bad ankle. Did pretty damn well considering. But why not put in Harris there to guard? Thatās where our 5 assistants need to do a much better job. Regardless we can nitpick 2 pts here in there the whole game (Dunnās missed layup says hi), but we still had game in bag. Gotta foul up 3 with 5 seconds left. Again our 5 bloody assistants shouldāve been screaming as such.
Didnāt do it against Purdue either - he just looked blankly at Jerome before that last free throw.
I know whoever comes next will not take us as high as Tony, but it the moment itās hard not to be really tired of watching the same story unfold