There's nothing free about a free throw

Fifteen feet of distance awaited John Bagge, a free-throw shot separating himself from the basketball rim and glory.

Nervously he sat and squirmed on the bench.

Head down. Eyes closed. Fingers plugged into both ears to drown out the deafening noise.

A one-minute timeout seemed to last hours. Then, finally, he stood alone at the free-throw line. All alone.

Time had expired in Wheaton North's boys basketball game last season at Glenbard East as the visiting Falcons trailed by a point. One bit of unfinished business remained.

Bagge was fouled as the buzzer sounded to send him to the line for a pair of free throws. Two makes, and his team would win the game.

Glenbard East called timeout to freeze him. It worked.

Bagge -- with no players lined up on either side of the lane -- missed the first free throw, sending the home crowd into mayhem inside the packed gymnasium.

The Rams called another timeout to freeze him again.

"That was the most intense basketball situation I've ever been in," said Bagge, now a senior. "My heart was beating so hard and so fast, I could hear it beating in my ears. But when you miss the first one, you know what you did wrong and you can adjust."

For a shot that's supposedly free, Bagge felt nothing but caged by the pressure.

Somehow blocking it out, he relied on routine.

Right foot centered on the line. Left foot slightly behind the right, shoulder width apart. Ball on left hip, knees bent, ball brought up to his right side. A pause, three dribbles and a shot with a full follow-through on the toes. Eyes never taken off the rim.

Swish.

Bagge nailed the second shot to send the game to overtime. The Falcons eventually lost the game, though, providing Bagge a gritty dose of memory about that miss.

"I thought about it the rest of the season," he said.

What is it with free throws?

Players work their sneakers off to score points in the flow of the game, but when there's a chance at the free ones, misses all too often follow.

No rhyme, no reason.

Just frustration.

"I get really frustrated when I miss free throws," said Wheaton Academy senior Ben Euler, a 79 percent free-throw shooter this season. "It should be a given."

Yet it never is.

For all the free-throw books, videos, seminars and free-throw coaches, it never will be a given.

Rick Barry, an NBA hall of famer, is among the all-time leaders as a career 90 percent shooter. He shot his free throws underhanded.

"We've tried everything and we've tried nothing," said Naperville North coach Mark Lindo. "I can't put my finger on it. I don't think any coach can."

Rhythm and routine

At a young age, often too young to remember, players learn to shoot a free throw.

The technical basics, as Bagge showed above, are generally the same. Beyond that technique takes a back seat as a blend of rhythm and routine takes over.

"My routine's a lot shorter than it used to be, and I think that's helped," said Naperville Central junior Drew Crawford, an 80 percent shooter from the line. "I did too many things before, just trying things that made no sense. It takes your focus off the shot."

Players rarely change routines during the season. Introducing a ball spin, eliminating a dribble, those tweaks typically come in the off-season.

Nothing, however, could explain the routine Crawford once saw during a junior high school traveling game. As he stood in his spot along the lane, he watched the shooter dribble, pivot to his left, dribble again, pivot back toward the basket and shoot.

Crawford doesn't remember if the shooter made or missed the free throw. He doesn't even remember if his team won or lost.

But he'll never forget that moment.

"That was a complete mystery to me," he said with a laugh.

Like players, teams have different ways to practice and prepare for the charity stripe. Game simulation, though, is nearly impossible.

"You can practice free throws all you want, but once you're in the game it's totally different," Euler said. "A lot of it just comes with game experience."

Some coaches try daily practice competitions to keep it lively. Others don't allow players to shoot more than a few at a time because anything extra drifts away from the typical game situation.

By the time a player reaches the varsity level, the technical work is usually complete. Minor changes may be implemented, but it's mostly about forming a routine and keeping it simple.

"We want to make sure they're doing the basic things, but it's up to each player to find his own routine," said Glenbard East coach Scott Miller. "But if a kid is trying something completely different, he's got to prove to me that he can hit 75 percent of his shots before I'll let him do it in a game."

Jump shooters, guards for the most part, traditionally are known as better free-throw shooters. The rhythm they develop shooting from the field helps at the line.

The big men inside, on the other hand, rarely shoot jumpers. They're banging for post position and any semblance of a clean shot.

Shaquille O'Neal's poor free-throw shooting is well documented. Wilt Chamberlain was a lifetime 51 percent shooter at the line.

It's been blamed on bigger hands, too much strength on the shots, higher release points. It could be that post players are too busy working on their inside play to focus on free throws.

But Bagge, at 6-foot-7, has developed into a 75 percent shooter. Jake Lindfors, a 6-9 senior at Driscoll, is a 70 percent shooter.

With an area-high 211 free-throw attempts this season, Lindfors scores about a quarter of his points at the line. That's simply too much scoring to take for granted, so he works hard at it.

One way or the other, scorers will get their points. If it happens at the line, so be it.

"As a big guy you might not have the same feeling as a guard, but eventually you develop a touch," Lindfors said. "It's definitely important. The games we go to the line a lot, we're usually pretty successful."

'Row, row, row your boat'

It's mostly a wall of noise. Sometimes it's more bizarre.

It's not uncommon to hear student sections serenade free-throw shooters with a chorus of "Mary had a little lamb…", "Row, row, row your boat…" or even the alphabet song. It also could be a simple chant of "To the left, to the left…" or "Miss, miss, miss, miss…"

Whatever's brewing from a hostile crowd, free-throw shooters are obviously easy -- and captive -- targets.

"It's all composure, confidence and concentration," Crawford said. "The pressure gets tough, but you have to try and not get flustered. You just have to knock them down."

The heckling represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of the moment's pressure.

In the closest outcomes you can't help noticing free-throw stats when a team loses by a point after missing seven attempts. Late-game pressure can be overwhelming.

"As much as you look at other things, it always comes down to hitting those free throws," Miller said.

Some players handle the pressure with ease -- they even welcome it. Some struggle to keep their focus as the techniques they've practiced and the routines they've leaned on disappear.

What remains is a frightening sense of detachment from everything learned in the past. Pressure is the ultimate variable for which you can't prepare.

"Some people can't really handle it, but I love it," Lindfors said. "I've played all my life and I've been in so many big situations. It might be easier for me to block it out."

Every player has their own free-throw horror stories. The lucky ones also have the heroics to balance it out.

Last week Crawford hit a pair of late free throws against West Aurora to force overtime in a game Naperville Central went on to win.

Euler recalls a sophomore game when he hit three straight last-second free throws to break a tie and win it. Lindfors once hit eight straight his sophomore year to pull out a close win.

Then there's Bagge, who desperately tried to block out that crushing noise last year at Glenbard East.

He made his return to Lombard earlier this season and calmly sank six straight fourth-quarter free throws to lead his team to a 67-62 win.

Those free throws finally freed Bagge from the past.

"Every one of those free throws I shot, I just kept thinking about that game last year," he said. "I can't tell you how great it felt to step up and hit them."