Question

[817pony]

I want to start by saying I am in no way defending coach Doh, he deserves his share of the blame for this stretch that includes losses to PB and UTSA. At what point do the players need to be questioned though? They are actually the ones on the court, even the best game plan(again, not saying that Doh has this) can be worthless if the players don't give 100% during the games and practice. Nothing Doh is doing is causing them to miss free throws. They have the new Crum center with all of the free throw lines that they could ever want, are the players coming early and staying late to work on their free throws? I don't know the answer to that but I would like to know. Just wondering when that was going to be looked at? Sorry if someone has brought that up on this bored already and I missed it.

[FIVE-O-FAN]

I am not a basher and I hope Doherty gets things turned around. I also he has a great pickup in McCoy. That being said, execution, free throws, etc. All of this falls on the coach. He recruited them, he coaches them. That means the coach lives or dies by the on court production and execution. This is the way it should be.

[EastStang]

Generally when a coach recruits a player he knows if the kid has good mechanics from the line or not. I can understand recruiting 7'+ players who have free throw issues because you can't teach 7'. Heck Wilt Chamberlin never was very good at them. He was the last player I saw who shot free throws from between his legs. Anyway, I digress. So, unless a player is silly good in some other area, we shouldn't have players who can't hit from the line even getting scholarships (with the Big Man exception). I tend to disagree that free throw shooting can be easily taught. Like any other part of basketball it is a skill which a player may have difficulty learning due to bad mechanics (some players can't shoot well standing still) or due to head issues, or due to hand size, or prior injury (knees for example). So, you could blame the coach for recruiting a bad free throw shooter, but its really hard to blame a coach for not turning a bad free throw shooter into a great free throw shooter. Rebounding on the other hand....

[817pony]

Generally when a coach recruits a player he knows if the kid has good mechanics from the line or not. I can understand recruiting 7'+ players who have free throw issues because you can't teach 7'. Heck Wilt Chamberlin never was very good at them. He was the last player I saw who shot free throws from between his legs. Anyway, I digress. So, unless a player is silly good in some other area, we shouldn't have players who can't hit from the line even getting scholarships (with the Big Man exception). I tend to disagree that free throw shooting can be easily taught. Like any other part of basketball it is a skill which a player may have difficulty learning due to bad mechanics (some players can't shoot well standing still) or due to head issues, or due to hand size, or prior injury (knees for example). So, you could blame the coach for recruiting a bad free throw shooter, but its really hard to blame a coach for not turning a bad free throw shooter into a great free throw shooter. Rebounding on the other hand....

Im not saying that this is something that DOH needs to coach up, I'm asking why it isn't the players responsibility to spend their own time practicing free throws. While a lot goes into free throw shooting, practice will vastly improve your percentages. The fact is that a lot of these players are going to SMU on a full ride. These scholarships are worth over $50,000 a year, thats more than a lot of americans make. Shouldn't they be held responsible for their play at some point? Are these players really hungry for a win?

[Big Hoss]

Generally when a coach recruits a player he knows if the kid has good mechanics from the line or not. I can understand recruiting 7'+ players who have free throw issues because you can't teach 7'. Heck Wilt Chamberlin never was very good at them. He was the last player I saw who shot free throws from between his legs. Anyway, I digress. So, unless a player is silly good in some other area, we shouldn't have players who can't hit from the line even getting scholarships (with the Big Man exception). I tend to disagree that free throw shooting can be easily taught. Like any other part of basketball it is a skill which a player may have difficulty learning due to bad mechanics (some players can't shoot well standing still) or due to head issues, or due to hand size, or prior injury (knees for example). So, you could blame the coach for recruiting a bad free throw shooter, but its really hard to blame a coach for not turning a bad free throw shooter into a great free throw shooter. Rebounding on the other hand....

I disagree about free throws. It's not hard to have a decent shot percentage (~75%). My high school coach at my tiny private high school taught us the mechanics of free throws, and it ain't friggin' rocket science. And I was not that great of a long distance shooter (outside 15'), and I don't have a speck of the athletic ability of the guys who play college ball, so there's no excuse. Some guys (especially big guys like Shaq) seem to get it in their head that they are just not going to be good at them, and basically give up trying to improve.

[MrMustang1965]

When I played basketball (and football) we had a mantra: PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE!