Free throws vital

Earlier on this blog a poster was keeping tabs free throw shooting and lamenting the inability to convert. There is no questioning that 70-plus percent is vital to the outcome of a game. Back in the day, when Jud Heathcote was at West Valley, players were taught proper form and had to shoot them every day at the end of practice. Make 20 or 25 in a row and you got a milk shake. Ron Adams (of the Spokane Stars) made his reputation on teaching free throw proficiency, his girls often shooting in the 80 percent range. And while free throw shooting may in some eyes have become a lost art - people wonder how players so adept at making 3-pointers miss so many gift attempts from 15 feet -  at almost every game I’ve attended this year, a player when fouled shooting a 3-pointer has made all three of his free throw tries. I’ve never seen it happen so regularly.

Let’s hope the winter weather is behind us and the games can get back in a regular pattern.