Pharrell Payne Free Throws

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Lameck18

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Hi I’m a longtime follower of gopherhole and finally decided to join. So this is my first post.

Anyways did anyone else notice that taking out his 3 for 6 against Butler, Payne finished his last 4 games 12 for 13 from the line!

Penn State: 4-4
Indiana: 0-0
Northwestern: 3-4
Michigan St. (Big Ten Tourney): 5-5

Clearly he’s been working on it and it’s finally showing up on the court. It sure would be nice to be able to play him after the 4 minute media timeout without worry that he gets followed and goes to the line. Hope for continued progress and who knows he might be able to become a 70-75 percent shooter next year.
 

Lameck18 said:
Hi I’m a longtime follower of gopherhole and finally decided to join. So this is my first post.

Anyways did anyone else notice that taking out his 3 for 6 against Butler, Payne finished his last 4 games 12 for 13 from the line!

Penn State: 4-4
Indiana: 0-0
Northwestern: 3-4
Michigan St. (Big Ten Tourney): 5-5

Clearly he’s been working on it and it’s finally showing up on the court. It sure would be nice to be able to play him after the 4 minute media timeout without worry that he gets followed and goes to the line. Hope for continued progress and who knows he might be able to become a 70-75 percent shooter next year.
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Swish!

Great first post!
 

Full disclosure I never played high level organized basketball, and I suck at unorganized basketball, but as someone who watches a lot of basketball, his stroke definitely looks a lot better than it did earlier in the year. He still puts up some ugly clunkers like a couple he had last night, but yeah it's nice to not feel like it's an automatic miss every time he gets fouled.
 


cheeseheadgophfan said:
And we'd all take 15/19 over a 5 game stretch......if he just shoots 70% next year, it would be huge.
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Honestly he just needs to be 60% or better from the line and you can live with that from your center. Sub 50% is killer and means he can't be on the floor in any situation where you might need to hit free throws late.

He got significantly better from the line over these last 9-10 games. It feels like he has finally figured something out and can hopefully get to the point where he is reliable from the line. His physical play near the hoop is going to lead to him getting to the line a fair amount so would be huge for the team if he can knock down a solid percentage and will also up his scoring average by a couple points a game most likely.
 


Gophers1992 said:
Full disclosure I never played high level organized basketball, and I suck at unorganized basketball, but as someone who watches a lot of basketball, his stroke definitely looks a lot better than it did earlier in the year. He still puts up some ugly clunkers like a couple he had last night, but yeah it's nice to not feel like it's an automatic miss every time he gets fouled.
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I think it's more the routine than his form (IMO).

He used to do a lot of weird things at the free throw line. He'd put the ball behind his back, sometimes he'd rush it, sometimes he would take a ton of dribbles, and he just never had a set routine.

He is a pretty skilled guy (he can finish with his left, he has good touch around the rim, etc.), so I'm not surprised that he has improved with hard work.

Kudos to Pharrell.
 

It's time for me to sing my line in the opera: this is a skill that can be taught and learned. Anyone who watched the progression of Jim Rowinski (Purdue) over the course of his college career knows that anything is possible. Heck, Eric Harris was an awful free thrower when he enrolled, and he was well above average, even for a guard, when he graduated.
 

Overall Payne has shown the kind of progress I was hoping to see from JOJ this year, but they went in opposite directions.
 

In a crunch time, he can always say he hurt his back and let someone else take the FT for him. I'm not saying he faked it yesterday, that looked like a pretty brutal blow, but he did come back onto the court right afterwards.
 



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