A frustrating trend has popped up in three of Tennessee’s four losses on the season, and even beyond those defeats. The Volunteers are struggling from the free throw stripe, and that might be putting it
mildly. The issue reared its ugly head once again on Saturday afternoon against Arkansas as the Vols fell 86-75 to the Razorbacks.
Tennessee was just 12-23 (52 percent) from the free throw line while Arkansas was 29-33. It’s hard to win any game against any opponent with those kinds of numbers. Nate Ament — by far the player that goes to the line the most for Tennessee — was just 5-11 from the stripe, well under his 74 percent mark on the season.
Jaylen Carey, a certified hack-a-Shaq candidate at this point, was 0-2. Carey is under 50 percent for the season, sitting here with an ugly 46 percent mark.
“Well, we’re going to be that kind of team, like I told the team every game is we’re going struggle all year, and when you have a chance to get back in the game, you can’t make them,” Rick Barnes said after the game. “When you got a chance to stretch it out, you can’t make them.”
Tennessee was 8-18 against Illinois in Nashville, allowing the Illini to pull away late. The Vols went 8-15 in a road loss to Syracuse. Even in the big win against Louisville, Tennessee shot just 64 percent from the line. One of Tennessee’s best performances of the season came against Houston, where they hit 23-29.
“I don’t think we have a guy on a team that doesn’t think he can make them, but they’re going to have to make it when the lights are on,” Barnes continued. “But that just puts so much more pressure on everything that you do. Puts pressure on your defense. You want to run some things, but then you start thinking, well, if they get fouled, are they going to make the free throws? Guys that you want to be aggressive, they go pick up fouls and don’t make free throws. It really just continues to put pressure on every other part of the game.”
Tennessee now ranks 238th nationally in free throw percentage, sitting at 69.9 percent on the year. When you average over 22 attempts per game and play a physical brand of basketball like Barnes does, that number becomes all that much more important.
“Free throws, I mean, it hurts because you could say, we make our free throws, but again, they made layups at the rim,” Barnes said of Tennessee’s loss to Arkansas. “We didn’t. They made their free throws, we didn’t. And they won. Again, they won it because they did the things that were necessary to win it and we didn’t.”
Tennessee could have used a make or two in the second half, especially during the five-minute drought that ultimately doomed the Vols. Tennessee didn’t score a single point from the 11:06 mark to the six-minute mark, allowing Arkansas to build a lead and ultimately put the game away.
Looking around at the SEC, while they may lack an elite squad, the depth is there and nearly every night is going to be a war. Shooting 50 percent on the free ones they give to you is a recipe for disaster.
