Illinois Basketball: 5 observations from the Illini loss to Indiana

4. Free throw display is embarrassing

The essence of the free throw is that the other team did something illegal on the court to impede you from scoring the basketball. The referees give you one or sometimes two free shots at scoring points that you might have earned if the defender didn’t do that illegal act.

Most basketball players would kill for a chance to have a wide-open shot at the hoop. But when it comes to the Illinois basketball team, an unguarded shot from, I believe, 15 feet is the worst shot they have in their repertoire.

On Thursday night against Indiana, I witnessed, no we all witnessed, one of the worst displays of free throw shooting by a team in the history of the Illinois basketball program. The Illini would shoot 23 free throws to Indiana’s 13 attempts from the charity stripe. The sad thing is, both teams would make the same exact number of free throws, which ended up being nine for the night.

Illinois would end the game going 9-of-23 from the free throw line. That is an incredible 39.1% conversion rate. This was, by far, the worst free throw performance Illinois has had this season. In fact, this was the lowest free throw shooting percentage for the Illini since the 2018-19 campaign where we also shot 39.1% on 9-of-23 shooting against Nebraska. You have to go back to the 2012-13 season to find a lower free throw percentage. We shot 38.9% from the charity strip against Georgia Tech.

When Terrence Shannon Jr. shoots 60% from the free throw line, and he is our bright spot, then you know you have a problem. If you take Shannon away, the rest of the Illini shot a combined 3-of-13 from the charity stripe. That is 23%.

After that awful performance, Illinois is now shooting 65.3% from the free throw line this season. That is bad enough to rank No. 328 out of 363 teams in DI basketball. There is one word to describe all of this; embarrassing.