Negative Trend

[picks up]

Miners have not been making as many trips to the free throw line as they were in the beginning of the season. I'm not going to complain that we are shooting too many 3s but they need to get back to driving the basketball or getting it inside to our bigs to draw the foul.

Below is a list of free throw attempts for all of our games vs D1 competition.

21 to 11 NMSU
31-13 UNM
15-17 @NMSU
22-10 UAPB
25-17 NCAT
36-11 UCI

14-21 @Houston
8-25 @Hawaii
15-21 Ball St
9-18 Boise
11-21 @FIU

For the first 6 games we have had 150 (25/game) attempts to opponents' 79 (13/game)
The last 5 games we have had 57 (11/game) attempts to opponents' 106 (21/game)

Obviously, we also need to defend better without giving up fouls as well.

Some of this can be attributed to better competition and being on the road but free throw shooting is actually a strength of this year's team and we have to be better at getting to the line

 

[UTEPDefense]

This all relates to our relatively poor offense. How many times are we hitting guys cutting towards the basket compared to other teams? Our guards also rarely penetrate. Even our low post offense generally relies solely on getting it down to Bryson down low and forcing him work with his back against an positionally established the defender.

Terry could help Bryson out by at least setting a down screen/baseline screen for him down low, allowing him to switch off of his primary defender or even catching the ball at an advantageous angle, but I never ever see us do this. To Barbee’s credit, I watched him run simple plays like this all year to specifically utilize Character on the block. Terry is not giving his best player the same advantage.