Teaching and Coaching FT Shooting

[VanHoosier]

Sorry, thought you wrote this--

"I blame that on coaching."

LOL, well I sure did... man, this getting older thing can really stink sometimes.. apologies.

 

[CriticArisen]

LOL, well I sure did... man, this getting older thing can really stink sometimes.. apologies.

No problem. It's great your shot got better, mine never did.

 

[CriticArisen]

I remember Mike Copper being the head coach at Munster back in the 70’s, maybe into the 80’s. Growing up I Heard the stories of his and Valpo’s FT prowess and playing at ISU. He later Moved down to Indy to coach at Warren Central and Retired as the Superintendent in Lawrence Twp.

Considering the many paid coaches on staff can’t seem to get these guys to hit FTs (worst in the BT), maybe off-season they should bring HIM (or someone like him) in for 3-4 weeks to break down mechanics, go over the mental aspects and measure for improvement. It couldn’t be any worse.

TJD, Race, Geronimo, and X have shot almost 70% of the total free throws for IU and X has a respectable percentage. Most bang for the buck would be to improve TJD, Race, and Geronimo. TJD and Race have actually improved some since last season. The following players are shooting above 70%-X, Kopp, Bates, Lander, Leal, Durr, and Duncomb. Stewart, Rob, and Geronimo are horrific at around 50%. I have no idea what happened to Stewart but he is way underperforming previous seasons from the line. There are good free throw shooters on the team but they don't get much playing time because of other in-play deficiencies and so not at the line much.

I still believe the main problem is lack of natural jump shooters but higher percentages from the big guys would yield the best results considering just foul shooting. Other teams often have a role player for critical foul situations but in our case you can't really have role players because no on can be counted on to knock down jump shots so always a struggle and you don't want to insert a player for free throws and suffer a turnover.

 

[iu papa]

I was thinking about this some more and Butch Carter didnt have bad shot mechanics out of high school. I agree he needed more concentration and mental toughness etc. It wasn't a matter of rebuilding his shot and also improving his focus. He was never a great shooter but mechanics weren't bad.

I started thinking of players with bad shot mechanics and Quinn Buckner came to mind. They had other shooters and that wasn't his role but bad mechanics and a bad shooter but still a great player. Any way his freshman year from the line he hit .594 and as a senior .488.

In almost all cases it is late to rebuild someones shot in college. Their brains have played say 20,000 hours shooting that way and are resistant to a big change. You might be able to tweak it but major rebuild has low chance of success. The problem with this team is you can't have any great role players like Buckner because there are no reliable shooters.

I think you can see it during games and from game to game. They tend to rotate between players trying to find someone that can knock a few down. Too often they cannot find that player.