Did Jersey really play guard as the box score suggests? I believe guard is what she grew up playing in high school and was very uncomfortable playing forward.
Yes, it was awful. I thought maybe I was the only one having a problem.
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I have yet to see Jersey look comfortable. Sure hope that changes, but she still looks like a baby deer to me.
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jeremy–see PM
Nearly the entire team is made up of poor free throw shooters. As a team, they are making 61.3% of their free throws. One player Carr, is excellent at 86%, but she’s only shot 2.5 FTs a game. Only 1 other player is even in the 70 percentile, Makayla at 75%. All the other players who have played in at least 5 of the 11 games are either in the 50s or 60s, except for the player who has shot the most free throws. That’s Spencer at 44.4%.
Does Mike even have them practice free throws? Samara is a good, not great 3 point shooter (over 30%). Somebody on Mike’s staff needs to work with her on free throws. No reason for someone as good a player as her to be making only 44% of her free throws. She wasn’t great last year, but she at least made 60% of her FTs.
If Mike can’t get free throw shooting corrected, he’s going to lose a lot of SEC games he would have won if the team only shot in the low 70% from the line. His last team wasn’t great at free throws, but at least they were in the high 60%. The 2 previous seasons they were in the mid 70%. Surely he can get this fixed before SEC games start.
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Yes, constant buffering.
I’ve noticed that when I’m streaming to my TV and online on my computer at the same time, the TV stream generally works but my computer gets the short end of the bandwidth.
Lots and lots of problems with the feed last night.
As for the free throws, we were atrocious at the line. And it wasn’t like we were just barely rimming the misses out, we were flat bricking them all night. Very concerning going forward for this team.
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TV feed could not be improved with exception of the dead time caused by unsold commercial time.
Free throw percentages can be found on the attached link. https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/team/stats/_/id/8are for
Spencer is less than 50% for the year which is lower than her 60% last year. Daniels (75%) and Poffenbarger (71%) for the year. Looking back to the 20-21 season the Razorbacks were a good at the line. Recall how many points Chelsea generated from the foul line. Spencer emulates that same drive the basket style but is getting far fewer points. Certainly the coaching is aware of this difference and what will happen when the level of competition rises. Mike would be wise to talk with Muss about his FT improvement program. It works as evidenced and this year.
Overall this team is badly missing Daniels. While Spencer, Poffenbarger, etc., are striving to cover her absence is obvious on offense; not quite as much on defense.
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The feed was glitchy on my TV last night, which is almost never the case. I typically don’t have any issues with ESPN. I turned off the basketball game to stream the Rams-Raiders on Amazon and had no issues.
I turned the basketball game on my phone and it was fine.
Is Daniels hurt? I guess I missed that.
Ethan addressed Daniels’ injury in this thread yesterday.
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End of the semester, I don’t think I even looked at the board yesterday lol. You’re married to a teacher, you know.
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Wednesday, I read a quote from Mike, in an article by Dudley, saying that “Mak is day-to-day, but we are preparing that we might not have her before the trip to Creighton on Dec. 17th”. It is a foot injury.
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Spencer does not take anytime to shoot her free throws. She gets the ball in her hands and shoots in about 1 secound. If you watch good free throw shooters, they usually focus for a few secounds before the shot. They usually make the shot like Carr does. I was a Jr. High School BB Coach. My kids that couldn’t hit a free throw, I worked with them to get better after a pratice. Some thought it was crazy, but it worked.
I would start out making them shoot 100 free throws about 3 feet from the basket. I had managers record their makes, If they could make 70 out of 100, then we would shoot at the 5 ft. range. I also made them shoot the ball correctly, not over the shoulder. I had 1 or 2 quit, because they didn’t want to do it. We would back up until we got to the free throw line and by then most kids became good free throw shooters. To be a good free shooter some one has to help them shoot correctly early in their BB time.
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This is new for her.
Her thought process is to turn the free throw into a catch-and-shoot shot (that she is much better at).
Her FTM% is higher since she started this.
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The wife and I laughed when we saw her do that for first time - thought she was mad at something!
I have seen this work with some. Usually these players have problems hitting wide open jump shots because they have too much time to think. BTW, I had always wanted Shack to try this. Nothing else worked for him.
Young developing players do need to be taught the proper fundamentals of shooting and then practice shooting. But what I found out as a high school coach for 20 years is that good shooters will make free throws. But if they get in a slump, the more you talk about it the worse they get. The reason is it then becomes mental. They go to to the line thinking I can’t miss this instead of I’m going to make it. They are good shooters from the field because they don’t think they just react. If the player is a good shooter he/she will make free throws just don’t make it mental. Poor shooters are not going to make a good percentage of free throws. By the time they get to college it is difficult to turn a poor shooter into a good one. The last thing a coach needs to do is tell the player who was fouled to make the free throws. Let them think you are glad they are on the line or going to the line. Show some confidence in them. The way you react should they miss it will impact their ability to make them on future tries. You hear coaches all the time whose team is struggling at the line say I’ve tried everything. We shoot 100 a day or we run when we miss them etc. But they have made it mental so it doesn’t improve.
Last but not least, for sure don’t be quoted in the paper that we have to make our free throws. Everyone knows that already.
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One more thing, they do need to practice them just don’t harp on it in a negative manner.