The free throw. It's a major emphasis of just about every college and professional basketball coach across the country. But no matter how many 15-foot uncontested shots a coach requires his or her athletes to make before they're allowed to hit the showers after practice, nothing can prepare them for the screaming, sign-waving fans behind the basket at an away game, or the mental or physical fatigue they'll face near the end of the game. Make most of your free throws in a close game and you're likely assured a victory. Miss the front end of two foul shots and your mind starts to worry about missing the next one. \nAnd it's for these reasons that the free throw is perhaps the most important part of a basketball game. More than a few hoops greats never mastered the art. Shaquille O'Neal has an entire defensive strategy named after him because of his poor foul shooting -- the 'hack-a-Shaq.' Wilt Chamberlain might have scored 100 points in one game, but only made 51 percent of his 11,862 free throws taken over his career.\nThen there's the case of former Orlando Magic guard Nick Anderson in the 1995 NBA Finals against the Houston Rockets. He missed four consecutive free throws in the final 10 seconds that would have all but locked up Game 1 for the Magic. The Rockets went on to win the series 4-0, and Anderson sought the help of a sports psychologist after he found his free throw percentage drop sharply from 70.4 percent in the 1994-95 season to 40.4 percent in his 1996-97 campaign. \nBut there are those athletes who rise above the pressure cooker that is the free-throw line and make it look as easy as it should be. \nIU women's basketball senior guard Cyndi Valentin is one of these athletes. Valentin nailed 61 consecutive foul shots this season, a streak that included two straight 9-9 efforts in two straight games. This gave her the women's NCAA Division 1 record for consecutive foul shots made in a season, a record previously held by Ginny Doyle of the University of Richmond during the 1991-92 season.\nOn her way to the record, Valentin amassed a near-perfect 78-80 from the line this season, good for 97.4 percent on the year. This number sounds more like Homer Simpson's percent of body fat or Nerdy McNerdelson's last rocket science test score than a basketball player's free throw percentage. \nValentin's foul shooting routine is rather simple.\n"I dribble six times and put my index finger on the insertion hole," she said. "When I play, I try to block out the crowd so they don't bother me."\nWith the crowd out of her mind, there's only one sound Valentin hears on the court. Swish.
Ryan Corazza will contribute a weekly sports column covering anything and everything IU sports-related. Contact him at rcorazza@indiana.edu.
