Wednesday, April 7, 2010

April 7, 2008: Practice those free throws

SAN ANTONIO - In gyms all across the country, whether occupied by junior-high players, professionals, or somebody in between, nearly all basketball practices end the same way. After hours of drills and sprints and sweating and straining, the players gather at various hoops spread around the floor and shoot free throws. They do it when they're dead tired, when they almost don't have the energy to walk off the floor, so that when it comes time to hit big free throws at the end of a game, fatigue won't be an issue.

Now, any coach who hears players complain about the endless free-throw practice can simply put in a tape of the final 2 minutes of the 2008 NCAA national championship game to make his point.

Trailing by 9 with 2:12 to play, the Kansas Jayhawks had to resort to the strategy coaches dread: intentionally fouling and hoping your opponents miss. Fortunately, Kansas was playing Memphis, who ranked 339th in the country (out of 341 teams) in free-throw percentage. Memphis coach John Calipari said he wasn't worried about his team's free-throw troubles, saying he knew his players could come through when it mattered.

Think again, coach.

Memphis missed four of its final five free-throws, when making even one more certainly would have clinched a championship. Instead, Kansas was able to mount an improbable comeback, scoring 12 points in the final 2 minutes by not missing a shot from either the field or the free-throw line. When Mario Chalmers tied the game with a stunning three-pointer with 2 seconds left, Memphis could only wonder what could have been.

The overtime seemed like a foregone conclusion. Kansas scored the first six points against the shell-shocked Tigers and rolled to the national championship by a 75-68 score. And while the Jayhawks played like champions at the end of the game and certainly deserved their trophy, there were many who couldn't help but think that rather than Kansas winning the game, it was Memphis who lost it.



Honorable Mention:
April 7, 2003
NEW ORLEANS - In a battle of two hall-of-fame coaches seeking their first national championship, Jim Boeheim's Syracuse team edged Roy William's Kansas squad 81-78. The championship was decided not by a clutch shot, but rather by a block for the ages, as Syracuse's Hakim Warrick came out of nowhere to block the seemingly open Michael Lee's game-tying 3-point attempt with less than a second to play.

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