Huskies hurt by being foul from the line

Lorenzo Romar has one prediction for the second half of the Pac-10 season for the Washington Huskies — the free-throw shooting will improve.

"If we play USC [Thursday's opponent] and we shoot 55 percent from the line, it will totally shock me," Romar, the coach of the UW men's basketball team, said Tuesday. "It shocks me every time we do it."

Unfortunately for the Huskies, it has happened a bit too often this season. They rank 322nd out of 328 teams in Division I with a free-throw percentage of 59. The Huskies are even worse in Pac-10 play at 56.7 percent, a key factor why UW is 3-6 after the first half of conference play.

Washington coaches think the Huskies might have at least a 5-4 conference record if they shot free throws a little better, maybe winning games against Washington State (5 of 13 at the line) and California (8 of 18). The Pittsburgh game, in which UW lost by one and shot 5 of 10 on free throws, is another they believe got away at the line.

Turn those three around, and Washington's 12-10 record might instead be 15-7 and the Huskies firmly in the NCAA tournament conversation instead of not even being listed as on the bubble for the NIT by the one lone soul who bothers to predict how that tournament may evolve.

"If we were a decent-shooting free-throw team, our record would be different," Romar said. "I don't mean 80 percent, just 68 percent as a team, we'd have a different record."

Romar says the team isn't doing anything fundamentally wrong at the line and likens it now to something akin to a team-wide batting slump, saying "right now, this is a mental thing."

Though he is far from the only one to blame, Jon Brockman's struggles at the line may be impacting UW the most because he shoots the most at the line — he has taken 129 of UW's 461 free throws this season. But he has made just 72 (55.8 percent) after shooting 66.7 and 66 percent his first two seasons.

Free-throw shooting, however, isn't all that has ailed the Huskies through the first half of conference play.

When taking into consideration only conference games, the Huskies rank in the top half of the Pac-10 in just six of 19 statistical categories and don't lead in any.

Three of those in which they rank highly involve rebounding, long a UW strength and one that continues this season due in large measure to the presence of Brockman, who leads the Pac-10 in rebounding at 11.2 a game.

But even that betrayed Washington a bit last weekend as the Huskies were outrebounded by both Stanford (41-36) and California (41-34), with Brockman suffering from a groin injury and foul trouble against the Bears.

"That's one of the things we hang our hats on," Romar said. "We can't take a back seat in that one."

Most eye-opening, however, is that UW is averaging just 65 points in Pac-10 play, eighth in the conference and what would be the lowest average of the Romar era if it continues — Washington averaged 72 points per game in Pac-10 play last year.

The Huskies are also eighth in field-goal percentage at 41.7 and sixth in three-point field-goal percentage at 31.2.

Many around the program say the Huskies are a shooter short this season, a role that would likely have been filled by Phil Nelson, a 6-foot-7 forward who transferred after last season, his freshman year, to Portland State.

Brockman also says the team isn't setting screens as well as it did earlier in the year, and Romar says players sometimes get caught standing around too much while trying to get the ball inside.

An obvious concern with UW struggling is that the team begins to splinter. Romar, however, says he thinks this is one of the most together teams he has had at Washington, saying the Nate Robinson-Will Conroy-Brandon Roy group of 2003-04, which started 0-5 in Pac-10 play before finishing 12-6, was actually more in danger of breaking apart.

"That team, if it would have had this group's togetherness, it wouldn't have taken so long to get going," Romar said. "But I think this group could use some of what that group had in that feisty, mentally-tough type of take-no-prisoners attitude. I think both teams could learn from the other."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com