UConn't Commit a Foul?

(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Last week, I predicted the only way UConn would beat Missouri would be thanks to free throws.

Unfortunately, I was right. The Huskies shot 32 freebies to the Tigers’ 12.

That is a huge discrepancy for a team who won by seven points.

Sure,

Mizzou couldn’t shoot from the outside and that didn’t help its cause, but UConn couldn’t make anything from the floor in the second half.

Free throws won the game. But that isn’t unusual.

For the year, the Huskies are 641-of-943 from the line. Opponents are 306-for-438 from the stripe.

There are a couple teams every year who shoot more than their opponents make, but 203 more? I have never seen that before.

To prove my point, I went on

Statsheet.com to look up some teams in the past decade plus who were known for getting calls (North Carolina and Duke, among others). I also looked up every champion during that time and many runners up.

In the Blue Devils’ runner-up year in 1999, they shot an amazing total of 1,135 free throws, making 800. Obviously, that ranked first in both categories.

However, they gave up 730 free throw attempts.

That equals to shooting 70 more free throws than their opponents attempted.

In UNC’s championship year of 2005,  it went 724-of-998, both of which led the country.

It gave up 689 attempts, giving it a plus 35 total.

In 1998 with Antwan Jamison and Vince Carter, the Tar Heels went 666-for-937 from the line, with the most made and second most attempted.

They gave up 542 attempts, giving it a plus 122 made over attempts.

UConn’s championship team in 1999 was plus 31.

Arizona in 2001 and Kansas in 2003 were both in the plus 30 category, while last year’s UCLA team was plus 66.

The best I could find was that 1998 UNC team, until I looked up UConn’s total last year.

The Huskies were plus 147, shooting the fourth most amount in the country, while giving up just 509 attempts.

This year’s 943 attempts rank second in the nation, while ranking ninth in makes with 641.

Opponents shoot the third fewest in the country, while they make the second fewest.

That is 26.9 free throw attempts per game, to 12.5 for their opponents.

The Huskies make 10 more free throws a game than their opponents.

Normally when a team gets fouled a lot it is a physical game so the other team gets fouled too.

Dating back to 1997 at least, nobody was even close to being in the top five in both categories, and the only teams I could ever see a very small chance of that happening would be UCLA in the Wooden days and Duke in the early 1990s.

On top of the free throw disparity, UConn commits the fewest fouls per game in the country, by nearly two fouls per game!

That is incredible.

Sure, the Huskies shot-blocking prowess keeps opponents out of the lane a bit, but Mississippi State, who has nearly the same amount of blocks per game, commits four more fouls per game, so there goes that idea.

These numbers are just absurd and while commentators talk about the lack of fouls they commit, nobody brings up the ridiculous disparity.

They have won 11 games by fewer than 10 points over the course of the year. That tells you how dependent UConn is on the referees to win games. Even the Big East Conference stats are absurd.

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