MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) — Asking a Hall of Fame basketball coach like Bob Huggins to take suggestions from a semi-senile scribe who at his tallest barely surpassed 5 feet, 9 inches, and whose pants inseam was only 29.5 inches, who was clocked with a calendar rather than a stop watch and whose vertical jump barely rose above horizontal is like asking him how he's liked his Big 12 season so far.
Yet, we have reached the point when it comes to shooting free throws where it is obvious that something drastic has to be done.
So it was as we watched West Virginia lose its fifth straight, this time a heart-throbbing yet heartbreaking 77-76 decision to Oklahoma. This loss came about mostly because WVU could not shoot its free throws and the Sooners could. Ideas began running through a mostly empty head.
The most immediate thought was that with Larry Harrison now gone from the coaching staff, there is an opening, and it certainly might be prudent for Huggins to go out and find someone who shoots free throws better than his players do to handle the instruction.
Now, with Wilt Chamberlain no longer with us and Shaquille O'Neale pitching products full time, Huggins might have to turn to someone like, maybe, Rick Barry.
It's true that Rick Barry is now 78 years old, so this generation of basketball players do not know who he is, but it's a pretty safe wager that even today he can outshoot this group from the free throw line.
And Barry did it his way — underhanded.
We're not saying he cheated. We're saying he stood at the free throw line, took a deep breath, his legs spread far apart, bent at the knees and underhanded the ball into the basket.
Not at the basket, as this WVU team seems to do, but into the basket.
How often? How about 89.3% of the time over 14 professional seasons?
We know, if you did it today you'd be teased and laughed at, but he who scores the most points laughs last. When Barry did it, people even said he "shot like a girl," which in that era was considered an acceptable insult rather than the compliment it can be today.
The thing is, physicists have proven it to be a more efficient method of shooting than the traditional free throw shot, as if Barry's percentage needed anything to back it up.
It just isn't the thing to do. In fact, O'Neal, in an interview with Business Insider, once told Business Insider that he'd told Rick Barry, "I'd rather shoot 0% than shoot underhand."
Heck, anyone who attends WVU home games and sticks around their seat at halftime rather than rush to get into the beer line before last call knows that almost all the shooters in the "Kroger Shopping Cart Shootout" make their tosses underhand ... and have a higher percentage than WVU.
Maybe they just ought to let the Mountaineers shoot their free throws into Kroger shopping carts, come to think of it.
How bad is WVU at free throw shooting?
Glad you asked.
West Virginia was 8 of 16 for 50% on Saturday. Oklahoma was 18 of 25 for 72%.
Now, you don't have to be one of those physicists to figure out that there is a 10-point differential in free throws made in a one-point game, which might indicate that that's what cost WVU the win.
But this didn't just crop up today ... or yesterday ... or last week.
In their past five games, all Big 12 losses, the Mountaineers have missed 52 free throws. It's reached the point where WVU is probably going to pick up a technical foul arguing that it wasn't fouled by the opponent when a whistle blows.
Huggins is totally exasperated by it.
"I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do," he said on the radio postgame show after the Oklahoma loss.
He noted that each day at practice, he demands that every player MAKE 100 free throws. Not shoot, but MAKE 100.
Methinks some are fudging on that figure. If not, they'd still be in there from the last practice, shooting away.
