Fewer Players Feast on Free Throws
The percentage of Division I players for whom free throws are a crucial part of their game is falling
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The free throw is the only shot in basketball where the player is guaranteed an unobstructed chance to score. It’s also highly efficient: this year Division I players are averaging 1.41 points per trip to the line for two free-throws vs 0.90 points per field-goal attempt. Increasingly, though, players appear to be making getting to the foul line a less important part of their games.
In recent seasons, between 12 and 14 percent of D-I players who have attempted at least 100 field goals have achieved a Her Hoop Stats free throw rate of at least 20%. During this season and the most recent one, fewer than one in ten players have hit the 20% mark, the first time that’s happened during the Her Hoop Stats era (2009-10 to the present).
Some analysts define free throw rate as the number of free throws made divided by field goal attempts, but we do it slightly differently at Her Hoop Stats to try and capture a more meaningful number that describes how the game is actually played. We calculate it as the number of trips to the charity stripe divided by the sum of free throw trips and 2-point field goal attempts, a metric we’ve seen some NBA teams use. Under this definition, free-throw rate represents the percentage of time that a player is trying to shoot a two-pointer but is fouled and sent to the line.
There’s one obvious reason why this decline might be happening: players this season are taking fewer free throws on average. Using a per player game average (total attempts divided by total player games), the number of attempts per player game has dropped to 1.59 when it previously hovered near 1.7 in the past several years. Fewer attempts from the charity stripe means fewer opportunities to make free throws, and that’s going to bring down free throw rates. But why?
We've already seen that a decline in free throw shooting accuracy isn't the issue. As my colleague Adam Vachon found, through Feb. 22 the 356 NCAA teams collectively made 70.4% of their free throw attempts. If the season had ended that day, it would be an all-time high. So shooting ability doesn’t seem to be the culprit.
Another possibility could be the emphasis on three-point shooting - if you’re putting up shots from the perimeter there’s probably a lesser chance of drawing foul calls. Earlier this season I looked at whether three-point shooting had changed much, and the answer is: not really. Looking at this season, the percentage of players who have not attempted a three-point shot has actually increased from recent seasons. And one of the current players with a high free-throw rate is Taylor Robertson of Oklahoma, who has taken more than three times the number of 3-pointers than 2-point field goal attempts this season. The Her Hoop Stats free-throw rate formula shows that Robertson has a knack for drawing fouls inside the 3-point line, too.
Which leaves us with another option: are there fewer fouls being called? There’s some evidence for this. From the 2014-15 season through 2019-20, officials called an average of between 1.7 and 1.75 fouls per player game (that’s calculated by adding up all of the fouls called and dividing it by the total number of player games). That average has been slowly declining during that period, and for the past two seasons it has been less than 1.7 fouls per player game. For the current season, the figure is 1.64, the lowest since the 2012-13 season.
But this is a bit of a chicken and egg problem - are officials calling fewer fouls because teams have changed their offenses or have teams adjusted to officiating by changing their defensive approach? The NCAA data also doesn’t distinguish between defensive and offensive fouls, which complicates things.
The outlier season in all this, 2014-15, offers a reminder of how influential officiating can be. That season saw the NCAA Rules Committee raise as a “major concern” the lack of “freedom of movement” by players, stating in its rules for the season: “There is excessive physicality and a lack of freedom of movement in our game. Players must be permitted to move freely without being held, pushed, re-routed or impeded. Enforcing current rules will permit the freedom of movement that must occur.” One result was that nearly one in five players had a free throw rate of 20% or more that season.
It might be that we’re currently in an era where getting to the foul line, while still important, isn’t valued as much by coaches and players as spreading the floor and getting uncontested shots. Rather than emphasizing isolation playing, teams could be dispersing their scorers around the court. That’s not a bad thing in itself. Or maybe we’re in an era of increasing specialization, which could lead to a smaller number of players being the ones who seek out contact when shooting.
The player with the highest free throw rate (minimum 100 field-goal attempts) this season is Mandy Willems of Kansas City, who has a rate of 45.9%. That ranks 18th best since 2009-10. Williams is joined by two other players in having a rate above 40% this season. Three seasons ago, there were nine players who hit that mark. Even Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, who gets to the line an average of 7.2 times a game, has a free throw rate of 22.5%, largely because she takes so many shots.
The list of players who have posted the highest free throw rates is not a who’s who of college basketball stardom and is composed mainly of guards as opposed to forwards and centers. Some of the players with high free throw rates this season are more recognizable, including Jordan Lewis of Baylor, Veronica Burton of Northwestern and Jayda Curry of California.
To be very clear, a free throw rate above 50% is very rare; the highest rate on record since 2009 is 53.8% by Maureen Taggart of Northeastern in the 2014-15 season (a freshman that season, Taggart never approached that mark for the remainder of her career). Given the trend of the past few seasons, it’s looking less and less likely that we’ll see those sorts of rates very much in the near future, too.
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