Tuesday, January 22, 2019

FT shooting is a mystery

I think the evidence is in that Wes Flanigan was not a great head coach. He had enough deficiencies that he just did not get the job done. The jury is still out on Darrell Walker, but it appears that he will at least be no worse than Flanigan (which is not saying much).

It appears that Walker is a pretty good offensive coach. We do not have trouble scoring. We shoot well from both inside and outside the arc. One of the main things we do NOT do well, however, is shooting free throws. We are not the worse FT shooting team in the SBC, but we are close. Precisely, we are 10th out of 12 teams at 64.3%.

During Flanigan's administration, we were a terrible offensive team. We couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. But in his first season as a coach, we shot 74.1% as a team. Go figure! So how much difference does that make? That season we shot 582 free throws. We made 431 of them. If we had shot as poorly as we are shooting this season, we would have made 374 free throws, or a difference of 57 points. Not a huge amount, and stretched over a 32 game season, that is a difference of roughly two points per game. In a season when you play a lot of close games, that can be the difference in some wins.

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