Frank Martin delves into question of South Carolina’s struggles at free throw line
As South Carolina men’s basketball coach Frank Martin fielded questions during his weekly call-in show appearance, he caught the full angry fan rant on a subject fans love to rant angrily about: poor free throw shooting.
The caller in question was out of central casting, saying he was once a high school coach and now coaches church league teams. He also took a bit of a shot, declaring his 9-year-olds shoot better than Martin’s Gamecocks.
The longtime coach took a pause before addressing it.
“The only thing I can tell you is, A.J. Lawson is not going to go 4-for-10 very often,” Martin said. “He did (Wednesday). Free throw shooting drove me nuts the whole first half, but we did make, (9) out of 13 ... coming down the stretch. Missing free throws is a deflating play, and when you continue to miss them over and over and over, it deflates your team.”
As of Thursday night, his team was hitting 61.8% of its free throws. That ranked 349th nationally. It is on pace to be his worst free throw shooting team by nearly four percentage points and the third-worst free-throw shooting South Carolina team since at least 1997.
Only Lawson (70.1%) and Jair Bolden (70%) are shooting in the 70% range. The numbers are also pulled down by three young bigs shooting in the 50s, 40s and 30s and a pair of young guards shooting a combined 45.8%.
“A big part of that is a lot of the guys are freshmen,” Martin said. “And there’s one guy on our team, who I see his mechanics and I’m not happy with them, but you can’t mess with their mechanics halfway through the year, and that’s Jalyn McCreary. We got to help him when the season ends, change his free-throw mechanics. Everybody else, their mechanics are pretty good.”
He noted it was something he paid attention to but didn’t want to make a central subject because a coach can’t browbeat those players into hitting those kinds of shots.
He also pointed out much of the work comes from players and not coaches, mentioning guard Brenton Williams, who hit 93% of his free throws in 2013-14, and not because Martin had much to do with it.
“It’s a vital, vital part of winning games. I comprehend that,” Martin said. “All I can tell you is Chris Silva shot like 40% as a freshman. Shot 80% as a senior.”
That was a little hyperbole, but Silva did jump from 59.8% as a freshman to 74.9% as a sophomore and stayed in that range the rest of the way.
USC has seen one good free throw story this season in Maik Kotsar. The four-year starter struggled mightily through his career, connecting on 40.6% of attempts last year, including a stretch of four makes in 30 tries. He’s at 69.2% at the moment, 80.9% in conference play.
“We’ve got to stay patient and keep teaching,” Martin said. “As some of these young kids continue to mature, their minds relax, so that free throw can go in the basket.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2020 at 9:42 AM.
