Whether a basketball coach deals intensively with analytics or statistical agnostics, he will know who among his players can take free throws – and who cannot. It is the most basic of all basketball statistics that can account for its position as a public obsession.
Joe Golding knew what the numbers said. His striker Joe Pleasant had been fouled 1.2 seconds ahead and Abilene Christian was one point behind Texas in her NCAA tournament game in the first round. Pleasant two free throws were due. One would, if converted, tie the game. Two would provide an almost insurmountable lead. He was painfully close to a 50/50 proposal to miss every single one.
“I thought they were going in. I had no doubt they were going in,” Golding told Sporting News early on Sunday. “The kid works hard. He deserves good things. He’s a good free throw shooter. He really is. He hasn’t shot the free throws well this year, but he works on them all the time. And I knew they would go in.
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“Good things happen to good people. It was part of history. History was made. Joe wanted to do those free throws. I had no doubt.”
Golding was right, of course. Pleasant’s two free throws settled gently into the bottom of the net and prevailed, and Abilene Christian, number 14 in the east region, took a 53-52 win over number 3 in Texas, the Big 12 title seven days earlier .
“My coach, he said I would do two free throws, we would get a stop at the end,” Golding told reporters in a post-game Zoom call. “You work on free throws all the time. It’s no different, I shoot these or just myself at the gym. I just had to imagine them going in. And that was the result.”
Perhaps what was even more notable than Abilene’s win, and that says something, is that the Wildcats didn’t play exceptionally well, at least on offense. They shot 29.9 percent from the field. They were 3 of 18 on 3 pointers. No player scored more than 11 points. The Wildcats only scored 10 points in the last eight minutes of the game.
How did it happen? For one thing, Abilene had her hands on the ball more often. The wildcats forced 23 sales. They outperformed the Longhorns 36-31. That’s right: Texas took 6-11 Kai Jones, 6-10 Jericho Sims, 6-9 Greg Brown and 6-9 Royce Hamm in a game against the Southland Conference champion and got his dick kicked on the boards. The wildcats didn’t make many of their shots, but they tried 27 more than UT.
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“We showed an enormous heart tonight. A lot of adversity all night,” said Golding. “Couldn’t get the ball into the basket. Couldn’t find a way to score. But just kept guarding it and found a way to get on the offensive glass. I think 18 offensive rebounds on their five . When you’re not taking any shots and you can’t get anything to work, you have to find another way to win. “
Pleasant, who finished with 11 points and eight rebounds, is a 6-8 year old from Overland Park, Kan. His father Anthony was a defensive end of the NFL for 14 years and won two Super Bowl rings with the Patriots. Joe is built a bit like a professional soccer player and also shoots free throws like one. Well, most of the time.
Free throw percentage is a difficult statistic in basketball, generally overrated and often moody. The difference between the best division I basketball foul shooting team and the 200th team averages 2.4 points per game. Is that a lot? It’s not a little, but it’s no more consistent than a single missed blockout, a blown defense mission, an unnecessary turnover.
And it tends to be less reliable than many believe.
Case in point: When Connecticut battled Maryland at 2:53 on Saturday to recover from a five-point deficit, Star Guard James Bouknight took it on for a one-on-one. He didn’t hit. With the deficit of up to seven points and 2:29, he went back to the line for another front end. And missed again. Since the game was still available at the last minute and the terps had now risen by eight, Bouknight was given another free-throw opportunity and went 1 to 2. With a loss of 63:54, he was 2 of 6.
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And then there is still pleasant. He had missed 35 of his 85 free throws in the 2020-21 regular season so he had a percentage of 0.588. Of the eight active players who play double-digit minutes on average for the Wildcats, he is the worst shooter. It didn’t matter. These shots went into the basket.
“I would say it was more of a mental thing. I feel like I’m going back to myself just by imagining the free throws,” Pleasant told SN. “I’m just really trying to focus on my breathing, calm down, and realize that I’m working so much on it that for me it’s no different in the gym than in games.”
Abilene Christian has been a Department I program since 2013-14. It is a 5,300 student university with a previous appearance at an NCAA tournament that was named a Southland Champion in 2019. The Wildcats faced some more prominent Wildcats, the group that represents Kentucky, two years ago, and Pleasant said the look was decidedly different.
“I felt like two years ago we were just happy to be there. It was a first experience,” said Pleasant. “This team, we are ready to face another challenge: not just to be here, but to compete and try to get some wins down here.”
Abilene was the second number 14 in as many days to win an NCAA game in the first round, and the fifth team planted the 12th or worse seeds to advance in that tournament. What was remarkable: the wildcats didn’t need a miracle to do it. Unless you count those free throws. Which you probably should.
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