Will Lousy Free Throw Shooting Doom Memphis?

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The Friday before the Conference USA championship game, with former New York Knicks coach Larry Brown in for a visit, John Calipari told his players to go back to their hotel rooms and visualize making 20 free throws.

"That way," explained Memphis guard Antonio Anderson, "when we got out on the court, we wouldn't have to think about them, we'd just make the shots from memory."

Anderson and the rest of the players did as they were told. They returned to their rooms. They closed their eyes and imagined perfect free throw followed by perfect free throw, from the sweet release to the swish of the twine.

With this vision firmly lodged in their brains, the Tigers went out the next day against Houston and shot 45.2 percent from the line.

"Larry called me right after the game," Calipari said. "He said stop dreaming about free throws."

If you play basketball for the Memphis Tigers, you should probably stop reading this column right now. Or imagine it never was written. Because it'll only screw you up further, if that's possible at this point.

Sixty-five teams have been selected to participate in the 2007 NCAA Tournament. Of those 65, care to guess where Memphis ranks in free throw shooting?

No, not 61st.

Clang.

No, not 63rd.

Boiiing.

Sixty-fifth.

Dead last, at 61 percent. Visualize that.

Or don't! That's probably healthier, given what free-throw shooting is all about.

"When you shoot a free throw," says Tom Amberry, on his Web site freethrow.com, "the only thing between you and the basket is yourself."

Deep, eh? Simple and complicated all at once.

A player stands 15 feet from the basket. He is handed the ball and told, go ahead, throw it in the hoop. Nobody's stopping you. Nobody but you.

Does any other team sport stop for a moment like this? When there's no defender, no other moving parts? Football teams try to block field goals. Soccer goalies stay in their nets for free kicks.

A free throw is a 10-foot putt. Except golfers are accustomed to standing over shots, all alone, relying on themselves. Basketball players are not. Shooting free throws is a jarring departure from the reflexive, breakneck pace of their game.

Maybe that's why free throws used to be shot by specialists, the basketball equivalent of field-goal kickers, up until the 1920s. When the Joey Dorsey equivalent (47.5 percent) was fouled hard under the basket, in would come the Chris Douglas-Roberts equivalent (72.4 percent) to shoot two.

Alas, now Dorsey has to shoot them himself, which gave us one of the more entertaining moments from Saturday's Houston game. It came with two minutes left in the first half, Memphis up 27-26. Dorsey approached the line, muttering to himself about how he needed to make the shots.

From the corner of the arena some fans started yelling in the general direction of Dorsey. He looked up, nodded and smiled. When he hit the first free throw, he grinned and pointed toward the fans.

"They had a 'Joey' sign up there and they kept telling me to flick my wrist," Dorsey said. "So when I flicked my wrist and made it, I gave them some love right back."

Which says it all about this team and free-throw shooting, doesn't it? The players are now taking advice from the stands.

Oh, Dorsey promptly missed his second free throw, and it didn't matter a bit. Memphis went on to swamp Houston, 71-59. That's how it's been all year. Memphis has been so good at everything else, their free-throw shooting hasn't cost them a game.

But will that continue in the NCAA Tournament, matched against teams that have as much talent as the Tigers? Free throws matter come tournament time. See Cazzie Russell, who hit two free throws with no time left to give Michigan a win over Western Kentucky in 1966. Or Jim Loscutoff, who gave the Boston Celtics their first NBA championship by hitting two free throws to beat the Hawks in double overtime.

In the movie "Hoosiers," Hickory High only reached the championship because Ollie, the team manager, hit two free throws to win the semifinal game. Two years ago, Memphis lost the Conference USA Tournament championship game because Darius Washington couldn't do the same.

Might the same fate await Memphis this year? If the Tigers beat North Texas in the opener, they'll play Creighton (11th in the country in free-throw shooting at 75.5 percent) or Nevada (16th in the country at 75.1).

"We'll make them when we need to," said Calipari. "We might miss some during the game, but when it's crunch time, we'll make them."

This has been Calipari's mantra for the second half of the year, and the players repeat it reflexively now. At some level, that's the idea. If the players say it enough, they'll come to believe it. And if they come to believe it, they'll be able to draw on that belief even if it's not particularly rational.

It worked for Calipari, plainly, who said he used to be an "unbelievable" free-throw shooter in his college days.

"I couldn't guard, but I could shoot free throws," he said.

His last year at Clarion State, Calipari shot a solid but hardly unbelievable 71.7 percent.

By contrast, Florida's national championship team last year shot 74.4 percent. The University of North Carolina's national championship team the year before shot 72.5 percent.

It helps to shoot free throws, plainly. But - here's the good news - it may not be as absolutely essential as some would have you believe.

In 2004, the University of Connecticut Huskies finished 312th in the country with a free-throw shooting percentage of 62.3 percent. They made it to the Final Four, defeated Duke in the semifinals and then Georgia Tech in the championship game.

Despite being one of the worst free-throw shooting teams in the country, the Huskies danced away with the big prize.

So when things get tight, just close your eyes, Tiger fans.

And imagine that.

(Contact Geoff Calkins of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., at www.commercialappeal.com.)