On Sporting News radio this morning, Tony D'Addato and I spent a good portion of the 7 a.m. hour talking about the Fresno State basketball players, their missed free throws and whether or not they should be booed for it.
This was in response to Coach Steve Cleveland's comments after Saturday's win against New Mexico State, when he said there was no place for booing in college basketball. His team has had some poor free throw performances, including 15 misses in one game against Nevada, and the Save Mart Center crowd has booed a few times.
Tony and I agree that missing free throws is probably not a boo-able offense. Actually, we agreed that booing your own team is pretty ridiculous no matter what. I mean, if they give up, stop trying, quit putting out effort, OK, maybe, but Fresno State has been hustling all year long.
The Bulldogs have been pretty bad at the free throw line, though, especially the last couple weeks at home. The last three home games, they went 15-of-28 (Hawaii), 10-of-25 (Nevada) and 15-of-29 (New Mexico State), for a total three-game total of 48.8%.
That, is unfortunate. And really, really bad. So here is one email response ...
"I have a solution to our booing problem. Let's hold the coaching staff acountable for the teams poor free throw shooting performance. Why arn't the coaches taking the blame for the teams free throw shooting inadequacies. From this point on when fans boo a missed free throw, the coaching staff should take the heat. We are booing the coaching staff for not 'teaching these 19-22 year old young men' the fundamentals of the game. You can look these stats up just as well as I can, but here are the ones that stand out:
69.5% Hosley
62.8% McGuire
61.5% Hernandez
58.7% Bell
I would like to know what the coaching staff is doing to improve on this. Can you report on that?"
-- Eric
Yes, those are some fairly poor free throw percentages, although Quinton Hosley's 70% would hardly qualify as criminal. My question is ... what do you mean "hold the coaching staff accountable"? Should we pistol-whip them? Kick them in the shins? Maybe I should write a series of stinging columns about how missed free throws are the coaches' faults.
Does that seem silly to anyone else? What exactly separates the great coaches of free throw shooting from the mediocre ones? I'm told the Bulldogs shoot free throws in practice. By college, I think free throws might be one of those things you can either do well or you can't. No one makes a Division I basketball team then improves his free throw percentage by 30 points. Ooooooh, I'm right-handed. I had no idea. All this time I was shooting free throws with my left.
If anything, free throw shooting is affected by mental toughness, the ability to block out pressure, of being able to ignore the 10,000 people watching you. So, technically, the people booing probably are only making it worse. Which is probably why Steve Cleveland made sure to bring it up in the press conference. So people would stop.
See, the coaches ARE doing something.
Does anybody actually read the postings in here? This same entry was posted a day later by John Mincks. I submitted a post to that effect on his entry yesterday, but it wasn't posted. Not much point coming here if the blog owners aren't paying attention.