The Hoosiers’ captain had been surrounded by sharpshooters in his first three seasons: Jordan Hulls, Christian Watford, Victor Oladipo, Maurice Creek, Matt Roth and more shot IU to back-to-back Sweet 16 appearances. Those players left the program before last season, so the Hoosiers were left devoid of shooting.
IU’s lack of shooting — just 176 made 3-pointers — caused trouble on the offensive end of the floor. Defenses knew the Hoosiers couldn’t and wouldn’t shoot, so they packed the lane to clog driving lanes and force turnovers and blocked shots.
Then-freshman guard Stanford Robinson was particularly poor from behind the line. He connected on just 6 of his 29 attempts.
After seeing Robinson struggle with his shot all season, Sheehey noticed him putting up shots in a gym session in the spring. He noticed two things: shots were falling, and Robinson was using his right hand, not his usual left.
“He had seen me make 10 in a row with my right hand just playing around, and he was saying it looked smoother than my left hand and he started telling everybody,” Robinson said. “That’s when he started telling everybody. That’s when Coach Judson had seen it, and then Coach Crean had seen it and he liked it and it just went from there.”
After countless hours in the gym, four seasons of high school and a season of college basketball, Robinson started over. He switched to shooting right-handed full-time and got to work.
Robinson spent the rest of the spring building his new shot with IU coaches and then used the summer to hone it.
“It’s something he’s been working on,” IU Coach Tom Crean said to a group of reporters during IU’s preseason trip to Montreal. “It’s a little more natural for him.”
While Robinson agreed his comfort with the shot was growing, he said it has been a frustrating process.
“It’s been difficult at times. Sometimes I’ve been wanting to give up and just stay left-handed,” he said. “My teammates are telling me to stick with it, telling me that it looks smooth. It just gives me the confidence to keep going.”
He had already committed to the switch when summer training opened. Crean had seen the shooting issues that plagued his team and set out to fix it by bringing in a handful of players praised for their outside range to take the shooting burden off of junior guard Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell.
Suddenly surrounded by talented shooters, Robinson searched for advice on his transition.
“When practice started, my teammates were in it too, just helping me out,” he said. “I was replicating how Yogi would do his footwork, how James looked with his smooth shot. Everybody was in the process of making my right hand better.”
Robinson was suspended before the season and will miss the Hoosiers’ first four games. When he returns, he’ll bring with him a new approach to the game, he said.
“It keeps my defenders guessing, like now they really don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I can just pull up left hand. I can pull up right hand. I can get to the hole left hand. I can get to the hole right hand. It just gives me a lot of confidence because they don’t know.
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