Just stop with the it was a conspiracy to send Washington to the line type of thinking. Only one person was consistently attacking the basket. Washington. Only one person was fighting for rebounds. Washington. It’s certaibly within reason that he shot a ton of free throws. He’s the only player who played with any type of aggression and played through contact. Everyone else turtled up. SGA played soft. It’s notnreally Knox’s game to attack the rim.
Call it what you want.
It's fascinating to me when you've got a team of great free throw shooting guards, are in the bonus early, but they don't sniff the line.
I'm happy if you want to lay it squarely on the feet of the coach, I don't care.
The fact is that for some reason, we couldn't get anyone else (15-17 from the line) to the line down the stretch. Even on a rebounding foul, or something on the perimeter.
Meanwhile, Diallo gets called for a foul when KSU player is trying to save a ball inbounds, KSU gets marched 94 feet twice in the second half, etc.
When you have a team in the bonus, you attack with your guards. I have agreed with people that questioned why Knox wasn't posting up.
But nonetheless, it happened.
However, people tend to write narratives based upon results, and not always what actually happened.
In the 2004 Finals, the Lakers didn't get to shoot free throws, apparently because they didn't attack the basket. So, ESPN shows clips of Kobe missing perimeter jumpers. It supports the narrative. They didn't show video of Shaq getting hacked and not getting to the line.
In 2006, Dwyane Wade gets marched to the line, in Dallas, largely from getting "bumped" on the perimeter. Often, he was pushing off. But hey, Dwyane Wade was "aggressive".
Kentucky played poorly last night. I wouldn't say that they "deserved" to win. I do, however, think that the refs did a nice job of keeping it close by making sure that KSU got marched to the line on a lot of questionable calls. That happened.
And for some reason, KY couldn't find a way to get it's best shooters to the FT line, despite the fact that this included our primary ball handler. (Who, somehow, when we were down by a lot in the first half, managed to get to the line a few times in relatively short succession - just not when the game was close at the end).