The anatomy of a free throw is fairly simple. A player steps to the line, calmly takes two or three dribbles, lines up his elbow, and shoots the ball. Sometimes it goes in, sometimes it goes out.
And then sometimes it appears to decide on its own some time after contact with the rim.
With 20 seconds to decide first place in UCLA’s Pac-10 showdown with second-place Stanford, Bruin guard Russell Westbrook stepped to the line. The Bruins were down 61-59 after roaring back from a 16-point deficit with nothing less than the Pac-10 title on the line. The sophomore stepped to the line for his first shot, took his three dribbles, lined up his elbow, and shot the ball.
Long.
But after first bouncing high off the back rim and then bouncing low off the front, the ball eventually found its way cleanly through the bottom of the net.
Smooth.
“The free throw by Russell was actually God answering one of my prayers from the bench,” coach Ben Howland said. “Trust me. And I mean that; I was there praying right on the bench, and he knocked it down. I just got the tail end of it when it bounced in.”
Luckily or not, Westbrook sank the next free throw to tie the game, keeping the Bruins alive to win in overtime 77-67.
But in a game where the Cardinal gave the Bruins all they could handle, Westbrook’s free throw was nowhere near the end of the game.
Following his second free throw that knotted the game at 61-61, Lawrence Hill of Stanford drove the length of the court for a layup after the Bruins put on a full court press, a move Howland later said he was “kicking himself” about.
And then came another fortuitous moment.
With seven seconds to go, the ball was inbounded to point guard Darren Collison, who took it the length of the court on a drive. Going up with the ball 10 feet from the basket, he appeared to be cleanly blocked by Hill ““ but at 2.5 seconds a referee’s whistle breathed new life into UCLA. Given a shot at the line for two free throws, Collison knocked down both to force overtime.
“That was a block,” Collison said. “That was a complete block. We were fortunate to get a foul on that call. I heard it was a makeup.”
Collison was quickly shushed by his jovial teammates in the postgame news conference, but no Cardinal player could quiet his play in the second half and overtime.
The guard poured in 24 points, 19 of which came after the first half. Westbrook also had 17 points in the second half and overtime.
After being tentative in the first half, the Bruins used dribble penetration to pull even with the Cardinal in the second half and then dominate in overtime.
The Bruins outscored Stanford 14-4 in the final five-minute period, though most of the Bruins’ points came in the final minute when the Cardinal were forced to foul.
But in the end, it all hinged on a friendly hoop.
“I just went up there and put as much arc on it to give it a good chance of going in,” Westbrook said of his free throw. “The second was a lot easier than the first.”
Howland was complimentary of the effort by the Cardinal.
“Anybody who doesn’t think Stanford has a good chance of getting to the Final Four is kidding themselves,” Howland said.
But the Bruins have made their own road easier, clinching the regular season Pac-10 championship and likely the title of best team in the West, which should earn them a spot in the Phoenix Regional of the NCAA Tournament.