John Calipari and Memphis: Free Throws Are Free, But You Paid the Price

5. Indiana, 1981, and Florida, 2006, 74.4

Bottom Five Free Throw Percentages of NCAA Tournament Winners

1. Oklahoma State, 1945, 56.4

2. CCNY, 1950, 57.7

3. San Francisco, 1956, 60.4

4. Oklahoma State, 1946, 60.9

5. Connecticut, 2004, 62.3

Comparing this year's No. 1 seeds at the free throw line

1. North Carolina, 76.1 percent (617-of-811)

2. UCLA, 73.1 (530-of-725)

3. Kansas, 70.2 (530-of-755)

4. Memphis, 59.6 (483-of-811)

"Everybody, all they want to talk about is our free-throw shooting," Calipari said in a conference call prior to the NCAA Tournament.

John Chaney, one-time enemy and now friend of Calipari, mentioned Memphis's poor free-throw shooting to Calipari late in the season: "He said, 'You tell your guys I'll punch them in the mouth if they don't start making free throws,'" Calipari said.  "He's hilarious."

Calipari said nobody is talking about the 11 shots his Tigers blocked or their five turnovers against a Mississippi State defense that ranked second in the country in field goal percentage defense.

The Tigers and UCLA are the only teams to reach the regional semifinals in each of the last three years.  "But everybody, all they want to talk about is our free-throw shooting," Calipari said.

"It's almost to the point of, 'Do you really even know what my team does well or doesn't do well?'  Or is it because you don't know.  You just say, 'It's free-throw shooting. That's all I'm going to talk about,'" Calipari said during a conference call prior to the tournament.

"I don't know why.  I come back to the conclusion that maybe they haven't seen our team play nor do they really know, and the easy thing to talk about off the stat sheet is our free throws.  Maybe I'm wrong though."

Memphis shot 62 percent as a team last season and 68.2 percent for 2005-2006.  The number dipped to around 59 percent this season—ranking them near rock bottom among all Division I teams.

John Calipari mentioned in his post-game press conference that this was about "God's Will."

God didn't "will" him to take a free-throws-don't-matter attitude and to embed it into the Memphis system.

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