During the Vanderbilt game, it felt like they were getting to the line far more than we were. At one point, they'd attempted 20 or so FTs to our six. It had me thinking, it felt like this has been the case for a number of games, so I looked into it and in SEC play, we have attempted more FTs than our opponents four times in 12 games and some of the differentials are staggering.

@Vandy 10-29 (-19)
Mizzou 15-15 (0)
Florida 19-23 (-4)
@Bama 28-32. (-4)
@UGA 20-10 (+10)
SC 10-12 (-2)
MSU 24-15 (+11)
@tu 19-26 (-7)
@TU 32-42 (-10)
OU 25-16 (+9)
@Auburn 20-31 (-11)
LSU 21-20 (+1)

In our five losses, our opponents have attempted 37 more FTs than us, including Vandy shooting 19 more than us and Tennessee attempting ten more.

There have been three games where our opponent has attempted 10 or more FTs than us.

As the road team, we have attempted more FTs than our opponent just once and that was our blowout win against UGA.

For those that know more about basketball than me, would y'all chalk this up to our size issues and not getting into the paint? Today we had 40 points in the paint to Vandy's 28, which seems odd. Or our style of play? Or the SEC refs just sucking or what?

This 80% of portal players thing has gotten off the rails a little bit, I think. I think it was just 80 of the top 100, and even that's not the whole story because the portal was still open.

We are +19 on fouls in our last 4 games. I don't know if it's bad officiating, bad luck, lack of focus or what, but it's extremely disappointing to see us play so damn undisciplined and not really see any changes or adjustments.

Fair point. But regardless, we took the best players we could get. I think some of our fans are forgetting this

2nd Generation Ag said:

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Today we drove the ball a ton to the basket with minimal calls.

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Yeah, we're usually a jump shooting team, but Hill, Agee, and Clemence all should've had a couple more trips to the line at least.

Every team has an identity. If the refs are calling against you, you change it. That doesn't mean to roll over, that means get over physical so they have to call every foul on both sides or somebody gets hurt. You can do it without getting flagrant every time. We were taught that.

I think we commit at least 4 stupid stupid fouls a game.

We also have three to 4 drives where we absolutely get crazy to avoid contact.

That's an 8 foul differential, right there.

That assumes that the teams we play don't also have multiple stupid fouls (it is college basketball, every team will likely have multiple stupid fouls a game) and stupid drives to the hoop (it is college basketball, every team will likely have multiple stupid drives to the rack a game).

I was at today's game. Things that frustrated me - 1)We missed a lot of easy layups and bunnies. Even with contact they should be able to finish at the rim. 2) We reach way too much…leading to fouls and more FTs for our opponent. 3) If we're not pressing there are certain guys that shouldn't ever be in the game. 4)No reason Federiko should be getting 14 minutes over Vinson's 3.

It's going to be a hard to win 3 out of the last 6 to make the Big Dance as I think we'll need 10 conference wins to get in after this losing streak.

I don't know how people watched this game and thought Federiko should play less. Yeah, he's not very good, but I thought he was the one guy other than Hill who actually showed some fight on the court and thought he gave us a spark for a few minutes. He was actually +4 in his 14 minutes.

Dude frustrates me too but I keep banging the drum since the losing streak started we need federiko in more. We look like shrimps out there without a guy like him.

Heineken-Ashi said:

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TjgtAg08 said:

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We are +19 on fouls in our last 4 games. I don't know if it's bad officiating, bad luck, lack of focus or what, but it's extremely disappointing to see us play so damn undisciplined and not really see any changes or adjustments.

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In 2 of our last 4 games, our opponent didn't get their first foul until 75% of the way through the fist half.

I'm sorry, but this is basketball. The statistical likelihood of that happening once is tiny. Twice in a week and a half? Microscopic.

The things we get called for are not called on the other end. I'm not talking about our dumb fouls, reaches, and press related fouls. Opponents are allowed to bump us, routinely set moving screens, commit contact going through us on rebounds, and play a LOT more physical in the paint.

If that's the way it's going to be, I wish Bucky would just coach our guys to make sure their players hit the ground hard.

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I agree with this. I think we are committing a bunch of dumb fouls that are being called correctly, but we are not getting any of the same fouls called for us.

Fair point.

Just for more fodder, alabama picked up their 2nd foul with 3:30 left to play in the first half when we played them. Ended the first half with 3 fouls.

I get that our game style doesn't lend itself to a lot of FTs. But come on. 29-10 is ridiculous

bobinator said:

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It's a lot of things. We commit a lot of dumb fouls reaching, we also have a couple guys that commit a lot of dumb fouls rebounding, we shoot a ton of threes, and when we do drive we don't finish particularly well and a lot of our guys try to be too creative with their shots to avoid contact instead of just playing through it.

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This is exactly the answer. When I watch some of our guys attack it's comical the lengths they'll go to in order to try and avoid a defender and lay it up. Hill can actually finish some of those and he's put some in out of some near impossible angles, but he's the exception to our otherwise wayward drives.

Jacari is probably actually too small to effectively finish at the rim regardless, but no reason the Clemence and Agee and Isaacs shouldn't be more assertive around the rim instead of avoiding contact.

I know the press leads to some fouls behind the half court line and I'm ok with that but we commit too many dumb fouls 50+ ft from the opponents basket . That may be one of the more frustrating things for me about this team.

As far as the refs not calling things evenly the only really obvious thing I see is our "bigs" get pushed around a lot off ball . Part of that is a general lack of lower body strength and there wasn't much time to address that on S & C with this group.

Yeah, we're going to be a team that fouls quite a bit, but there's a huge difference between aggressive fouls and some of the lazy reaching and stuff we've been doing lately.