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16 February 2010
MORGANTOWN - The last thing Bob Huggins wants to do right now is dwell on free-throw shooting.
Practice those freebies? Sure. But obsess about it? Fixate on it?
No way.
Let's face it, there is a point of diminishing returns involved here, particularly with something as routine as free throws. What was it Yogi Berra said about hitting? It's 90 percent mental and the other 50 percent is physical?
Free throws are pretty much the same way. If you've been doing it all your life sure, there might be some technical aspects that can be adjusted or corrected. But a lot of it is relaxing and simply believing the ball is going to go in the basket. If you know the world - or your coach - is watching and wondering if you can do it, well, so much for relaxing and believing.
Like Phil Knight's company implores, Just Do It.
We bring this up, of course, because West Virginia is no longer a top-5 basketball team, largely due to the fact that it didn't make free throws when those freebies were needed most. Sure, you can point to a lot of faults and reasons for why the Mountaineers lost in three overtimes at Pitt, but those are all secondary. Don't miss the front end of three one-and-one chances in the final minute of regulation and that 98-95 three-overtime loss becomes a pretty routine win, probably by double digits.
The bottom line is this: Instead of celebrating only the 12th win by any team over Pitt in the eight years the Petersen Events Center has been open, West Virginia is languishing in the glare of a very bad loss.
Entirely because of a handful of missed free throws.
So if you're Huggins, what do you do about it?
Again, you don't dwell on it. You just go back to work and treat the free-throw shooting parts of practice like you always do. Whatever you do, don't exacerbate it by turning it into any more of a mental block than it might already be.
