Kentucky's free throw shooting woes are frustrating, but not as bad as you think

No one wants to be a wet blanket after Kentucky just beat Louisville for the gazillionth time in a row. The game was awesome, gave us another chapter in a storied rivalry with a hero in a comeback story, a villain and his middle finger, and the Kentucky head coach recreating the little brother shirt in a skirmish.

However, if you’ll allow me to briefly turn on the faucet to dampen the corner of everyone’s favorite blue blanket, I promise I’ll blow dry it as soon as I’m finished. Deal?

It’s the free throw shooting. What gives? The ‘Cats shot 18-28 (64.3 percent) from the charity stripe against the Cardinals which drops the overall season shooting to 72.3 percent. This comes after similar outings from the line against Colgate (61.5 percent), Clemson (61.1 percent), and Western Kentucky (69 percent). The only remarkable showing as of late was 83.3 percent against Gonzaga, but Andrew Carr’s two misses in the final seconds stick out as the most prominent free throws all game.

Even in Lamont Butler‘s masterful performance against Louisville where he finished third all-time in school history with the number of made field goals without a miss (10), he still shot just 7-12 from the line.

For a team so fun with such good chemistry, its free-throw shooting woes must be an anomaly, right?

It’s not as bad as you might think

Despite multiple bad outings, the overall numbers aren’t as bad as you might think. Kentucky has made 167 out of its 231 attempts this season. At 72.3 percent, this ranks them 160th in the nation. Not great, but slightly better than the mean.

Now consider the fact that 72.3 percent is better than nine out of Kentucky’s previous 15 seasons. The only times during that stretch Kentucky shot better than 74 percent as a team was last season (77.2 percent) and in 2020 (79.7 percent). Even Mark Pope’s 1996 National Championship team shot just 71.3 percent from the free-throw line.

Here’s another weird stat: it may be easy to point at Lamont Butler’s seemingly unusual struggles from the line, but he has actually improved his shooting over last season. With San Diego State a year ago, he shot just 59.4 percent from the line. So, while his 62.8 percent isn’t great with Kentucky, it is better than what he did last season.

Butler is also shooting a career-best 48.1 percent from 3-point range. Most of Big Blue Nation are happy to make that trade-off.

Similarly, Amari Williams who has shot the second-most free throws on the team behind only Otega Oweh, is shooting very close to his career average at their previous school. Williams is at 62.5 percent with Kentucky compared to 63.1 percent during his four years at Drexel.

Meanwhile, Oweh (who, again, has the most attempts on the team) is shooting 10 percentage points better than he did at Oklahoma (75.5 percent at Kentucky versus 64.5 percent at OU) while Andrew Carr (who is fourth on the team in attempts) is shooting 79.4 percent, the best of his last four seasons.

The point is that overall, this is not as bad of a free-throw shooting team as your eyes might tell you. Sure, there is room for improvement and you’d like to see the crucial ones in big games drop, but in the big scheme of things, Kentucky is, and will be just fine from the free throw line.