That might be one of the most pointless stats I’ve ever seen when your example is a neutral site game. However, your first statement of us being 256th does somewhat back up the argument that our home court advantage is not great.
Illini Basketball 2026-2027
I’m coming into this with an open mind, it’s interesting to me. Does FT% defense correlate more with home crowd or more with quality of opponents? For example, if Penn was 3rd nationally, where was Purdue/Duke/Kansas/Kentucky ranked in the stat?
Here’s the top teams nationally:
You have to scroll way way down below 100 to find Duke, Purdue.
They really need to weight it against the free throw % the opponents average for the season to determine how good a team is at stopping the free throw
Kansas was 13th.
Purdue was 186th.
Kentucky was 236th
Duke was 111th.
I will say -- Houston was 32nd (4th in Power 5) and Alabama was 35th (5th in Power 5). IIRC, those were our two worst FT shooting games last season.
I've been more curious about opponent free throw attempts per team foul. Duke was an outlier there at 0.86 followed by us at 0.92 then Yale and Iowa St at 0.96.
I'd expect to find teams that don't foul much at the top of that list since opponents spend less time in the bonus, but that wasn't the case- except for Illinois, the rest of the top 8 in fewest opponent FTs per foul were outside the top 35 in fouls per game (and an average rank of ~70). So there's something unique about these teams' style of play.
Was Duke really intentional to avoid fouling shooters but otherwise played very physical, perhaps backing off a bit if the other team was in the bonus? If so, is there something to that strategy? Our low-foul approach certainly reduced the stress of fouling out, but could our defense benefit from playing more aggressively?
I'd expect to find teams that don't foul much at the top of that list since opponents spend less time in the bonus, but that wasn't the case- except for Illinois, the rest of the top 8 in fewest opponent FTs per foul were outside the top 35 in fouls per game (and an average rank of ~70). So there's something unique about these teams' style of play.
Was Duke really intentional to avoid fouling shooters but otherwise played very physical, perhaps backing off a bit if the other team was in the bonus? If so, is there something to that strategy? Our low-foul approach certainly reduced the stress of fouling out, but could our defense benefit from playing more aggressively?
Which is why I like to look at it amongst power 5 teams (problem is you'll kinda need to count all the way down).
Of the top 50 nationally, there were only 7 teams who were from the P5. Though #1 was Cal and #2 was Boston College (both from the ACC).
.....
Here's the free throw percentage defenses of every BIG TEN team, ranked. Illinois was 8th:
Moron who made that doesn't remember 1915. Illinois was the national champion.
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Sounds good to me. Hang the banner.
It might have to do with how players act on the free throw line.
I've seen some guys have their arms up while the opponent is shooting, and maybe that distracts the shooter.
You can decide if our beloved Illini earned that title. There was no national championship tournament in 1915...but the Fighting Illini basketball team earned 16 victories without a loss.
But some organization named the Helms Athletic Foundation was founded 21 years after that season. Some part of that Foundation retroactively awarded the national title to the Illini.
So there you have it.
Finally confirmed 0440 is not Bruce Weber.
We really need to work on this if we want to win the conference this year. 8th is not acceptable.
Dope! I didn’t know the rules of HS players spending time on campus prior to official enrollment. Hope we can get Cole Kelly on campus soon too.