NyAggie said:

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How does a team go from shooting 70% or more through 15 or so games to what we've seen the last few games?

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Probably mostly the mix of who is taking them. Seems like Wade was taking a ton earlier in the season and when he's around 90% it really brings up the team average. Also Payne and Phelps are getting a lot more touches now and they're shooting a lower percentage than other guys like Manny and Solo who were touching the ball more earlier in the season

GE said:

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NyAggie said:

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How does a team go from shooting 70% or more through 15 or so games to what we've seen the last few games?

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Probably mostly the mix of who is taking them. Seems like Wade was taking a ton earlier in the season and when he's around 90% it really brings up the team average. Also Payne and Phelps are getting a lot more touches now and they're shooting a lower percentage than other guys like Manny and Solo who were touching the ball more earlier in the season

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That makes sense

Before the game in shoot around why don't they practice free throws instead of shooting threes

FT's are not really that impactive on winning vs losing according some folks here.
And we just had a bad game, make that two, no three CONSECUTIVE bad games at the FT line.

Quite simply, we just don't shoot well outside the paint.
Talk about an Achilles heel ...

You can't be this athletic and not be able to shoot free throws
It's more psychological than physical.

But it's an area wide open for some task coaching on this team

Yeah but it was really bad and we lost to UH in OT with a similar performance. The game plan worked. The FT shooting failed us.

I'm actually a bit optimistic because it's clear to me that it's a mind thing now. And we're still early in the season. They'll have a good game by accident and all will be better. I have no doubt they're working hard.

GE said:

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People act like things can just change over night. It's not that easy to learn to make free throws consistently. Go show examples of coaches who routinely have multiple players improving FT % across their collegiate career.

Want to make a higher percentage of free throws, all you have to do is recruit high FT% shooting players.

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This....besides Taylor, Washington and Wilcher, the rest of the guys have never been very good at shooting free throws. Everyone is fairly close to their career average, or slightly better. Jace Carter is the lone exception. Here are the stats:

Player Career 24-25 Season
Taylor 85.1 89.3
Phelps 66.7 66.2
Obaseki 63.9 71.2
Hefner 67.0 68.2
Washington 74.8 79.5
Coleman 68.9 68.8
Payne 50.2 55.9
Garcia 66.5 67.6
Carter 64.0 44.4
Wilcher 74.8 85.7