This Wofford basketball player needed major help with free throws. An NBA legend showed up
Kyler Filewich bounced the ball once and took a deep breath.
People in and around the Wofford men’s basketball program knew what was coming. But the fans and national TV audience were in for a surprise.
“I’m just telling myself to lock in,” Filewich said. “I knew a lot of people would be surprised by it, but I just ignored that and focused on what I had to do to make the shot.”
Filewich relaxed and flung his first underhanded free-throw attempt into the air. He drilled the shot. The fans inside Jerry Richardson Indoor Stadium roared.
The Wofford senior center unveiled his new free-throw shooting style to the college basketball world in a Feb. 5 game on ESPNU against Chattanooga. He’s been shooting all his free throws underhanded ever since.
And like every good underhand free-throw tale, Filewich’s story has a direct Rick Barry connection.
Why underhanded?
Free throws haven’t exactly been “free” for Filewich. He’d be the first to tell you they’ve been quite difficult.
The 6-foot-9 center from Canada has struggled from the free-throw line throughout his career. In five years of college basketball, Filewich (pronounced FILL-uh-which) sports a career free-throw percentage of 37.7%. And in his three seasons with the Wofford Terriers, that number is actually lower (34.2%).
His best season came as a sophomore at Southern Illinois, where he shot 50% from the line.
“I haven’t been a great free-throw shooter, but I know it’s something I can do,” Filewich said.
He’s best known for his impact in the post. He’s nearly averaging a double-double with a career-best 11.7 points and 9.4 rebounds per game this season. Filewich leads Wofford and the Southern Conference as a whole in rebounding, and his field goal percentage of 56.3% is No. 7 in the conference.
After starting off 10 for 46 (21.7%) in free throws in Wofford’s first 10 Southern Conference games this year, head coach Dwight Perry and his staff went to Filewich and proposed a change in his technique.
The idea: Let’s try it underhanded.
“I shoot a lot better in practice, so I was holding out thinking, ‘All right, it’s gonna come around, it’s gonna come around,’“ Filewich said. That’s when coaches “told me it’s worth a shot for the last month of your college career. And I kind of agreed with them.”
Perry, who played at Kentucky and has been a college coach since 2009, said he’s never played with or coached a player who shot free throws underhanded. He credits Filewich’s willingness to adapt for the greater good of the team.
“He said he wanted to be a part of us winning, and he didn’t want to be in the way of us not being able to win,” Perry said.
Filewich’s second underhand attempt Feb. 5 against Chattanooga was off the mark. Still, that first make was a good sign after he’d gone 0 for 14 in the previous three games from the line.
“It’s probably a sigh of relief and everybody can relax,” Perry said. “It’s just like anything else that’s new. The first time you see it, there’s all this buildup, and then from there it’s very anticlimactic, and you get way more focused and lost into the game.”
Help from a basketball legend
Two days.
That’s how much time Filewich spent with Rick Barry — yes that Rick Barry — working in the gym on his free throws.
Barry is the godfather of underhand free throws, so to speak, and his 14-year professional career is synonymous with the technique. He was a 12-time All-Star who spent the bulk of his playing days with the Golden State Warriors, and he won an NBA championship there in 1975.
His career free-throw percentage of 89.3% is No. 8 in the NBA/ABA all-time record book. He led those leagues in free-throw percentage in seven seasons as a player, peaking at a 94.7% clip in his age-34 season in 1978-1979.
Thanks to a common thread between Barry’s son Drew and Wofford assistant coach Tysor Anderson — both played at Georgia Tech — getting the elder Barry to Spartanburg wasn’t hard to pull off.
“So he came up and got a chance to spend some time with Kyler and talk to him and give him his two cents,” Perry said. “Which, as we know, that’s about as valuable as anybody. To have your guys, not just Kyler, but your whole team be around one of the 50 best players to ever walk the earth. It’s nothing short of amazing.”
Consider Filewich amazed that Barry was coming to Spartanburg to coach him on the art of the underhand free throw.
Barry flew in on a Sunday and left the next day. He and Filewich broke bread and talked about life and basketball.
And they spent roughly nine hours across those two days in the gym practicing Filewich’s new shot.
“I’m super thankful for him for doing that,” Filewich said. “Not something he had to do, but he was able to come down here and share his time with me.
“We got a lot of work in. We shot free throws for hours on hours and continued to tweak. He’ll still text me from time to time after games, just asking how it feels and stuff.”
Still a work in progress
Barry’s visit to Spartanburg came a few days before Filewich debuted his new free-throw technique against Chattanooga.
“I grip the ball, take a deep breath, get set and flick forward,” Filewich said. “It’s a softer shot, so when it gets on the rim it can bounce better.”
The results have been mixed so far.
Filewich has shot underhand free throws in seven games and is 13 for 31 in that stretch. That 41.9% mark, while not amazing, is an improvement from where his conference percentage (21.7%) stood before the change.
His best performances came in back-to-back games against The Citadel and Samford, where he went 4 of 6 (66.7%) and 6 for 10 (60%) from the line, respectively. His six free-throw makes against Samford set a career-high.
“I’ve had some games better than others, but it’s definitely improved a lot,” Filewich said. “With more work, I think it’ll continue to get even better.”
Perry praised the amount of work Filewich has put into his new free-throw technique. Filewich said he typically tries to make 200 free throws a day in practice.
Filewich and Anderson “have a really good routine that I think has really helped him expedite probably what would be a much lengthier and longer process,” Perry said. “They’ve kind of shortened that to where, in a short amount of time, we’ve seen Kyler reaped the benefits and the team has as well.”
His quirky free-throw technique made for a semi-viral moment on social media, but Filewich still ranks No. 91 in the Southern Conference for individual free-throw percentage.
And Wofford (16-14, 10-7) will need a miracle run in next week’s SoCon Tournament in order to show off Filewich’s shot to the March Madness mass audience. Even if that doesn’t happen, he’ll still have quite the story to look back on.
Barry left an autographed print with Filewich that reads, “Kyler — Good luck with the underhanded FT!”
This story was originally published February 28, 2025 at 8:00 AM.
