Last season, there was no sight that brought a grimace to a North Carolina fan’s face quite like watching John Henson walking to the free throw line. Henson shot 48.2% while attempting the second most free throws on his team. Of course, this figure is somewhat misleading: Up until February 22, Henson shot a miserable 38.9%. After February 22, he shot 66.0%. What happened? It’s hard to say. The question that remains is which of these two free throw shooting rates is the “true” Henson? This may seem like a relatively minor issue, but considering the importance of Henson to the top-ranked Tar Heels, the foul-shooting problem constitutes a potentially serious liability. Fortunately for basketball fans, Ken Pomeroy is on the case, using a very clever method for projecting John Henson’s likely free throw shooting percentage for the coming season. North Carolina fans, though, aren’t going to be thrilled with the results.

Is John Henson's Mid-Season Improvement At the Charity Stripe Real?

It turns out that sudden, drastic improvements in free throw shooting tend to be flukes. Typically, a bad free throw shooter will modestly improve from season-to-season, so Ken Pomeroy suggests that the low to mid-fifties might be a good starting point for predicting John Henson’s season free throw shooting percentage this year.  I tend to agree. Of course, Henson isn’t the only player in the ACC who has a hard time cashing in the freebies. Let’s take a quick look at the worst free throw shooters in the league (who attempted at least 40 free throws last season).

1. Daniel Miller – Georgia Tech 37.0%
2. Julian Gamble – Miami 42.9%
3. Mason Plumlee – Duke 44.1%
4. Victor Davila – Virginia Tech 46.4%
5. John Henson – North Carolina 48.2%
6. James Padgett – Maryland 50.0%
7. Bernard James – Florida State 50.4%
8. Jon Kreft – Florida State 51.1%
9. CJ Leslie – North Carolina State 54.2%
10. Terrance Shannon – Florida State 54.5%

I feel bad for these guys, I really do. Every summer, dozens of poor free throw shooters like those named above vow to practice hard and be the best free throw shooters they can be in the coming season, and every fall we witness a stroke that tends to have improved only slightly, if at all. I would encourage fans to temper their expectations for improvement. These guys are trying, but fixing bad free throw shooting is hard. Try to not cringe when your favorite guy isn’t really much better than he was last year.

KCarpenter (269 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2011 at 8:00 pm by KCarpenter and is filed under acc, microsites. Tagged: acc, free throws, john henson, north carolina, unc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.