Dribble once. Twice. A third time. One more spin for good measure. Then let it go.
There’s not much concern with Isaiah Hicks’ free-throw routine, but it didn’t used to be this way. In his first two seasons with the North Carolina men’s basketball team, he shot a combined 61.3 percent from the charity stripe.
But now those makes and misses don’t matter. Or, rather, it helps to not pay much attention to them. Now it’s about the spins and dribbles. The process.
Against Miami in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals Thursday, the senior forward ran through his routine nine times. And nine times the ball swished through the net. He carried the mindset over to the rest of his game, too, scoring a team-high 19 points and leading the Tar Heels to a 78-53 win.
“Tonight he clearly wasn’t thinking,” Nate Britt said. “I think throughout the season he’s had some games where he’s thinking about what he’s doing too much. And we just need him to be aggressive.”
Not long ago, Hicks thought his way into a bad slump. In his first five games back on the court after injuring his hamstring on Feb. 8, he averaged 5.4 points per contest. He was also constantly in foul trouble, twice playing less than 15 minutes in a game.
He started to get back to his old self against Duke on Saturday, when he racked up 21 points and nine rebounds in a 90-83 Tar Heel victory. Before the team departed for Brooklyn on Tuesday, Hicks must have left whatever negative thoughts he had left at the airport gate.
“I had a talk with Coach. ‘Just play the game, lose myself in the game,’” Hicks said. “That’s the biggest thing that’s helped me so far.”
