From a Mark Ziegler article:
...Hands-off approach: Buried on the stat sheet is one of the secrets why the Aztecs are 7-2 and ranked 18th despite some major issues on offense: They simply don’t foul.
Against Long Beach State, they had 13. Subtract the six charging fouls in the first half (that may or may not have been charges) and the two intentional fouls to burn clock in the final seconds, and they committed five fouls in 40 minutes on the defensive end. Most teams typically average 20.
This season, the Aztecs have committed just 136 fouls, which rank fifth nationally among teams that have played nine games. That has already translated to more than 100 extra free throws than their opponents, 232 to 119. Thursday it was 25-2 and, even as poorly as the Aztecs shoot free throws, meant 13 extra points from the line.
Another way to look at it is the “free throw rate” used by college basketball stat guru Ken Pomeroy and considered among his most important metrics. It’s free throws attempted divided by field goals attempted, a measurement of a team’s ability to get to the line. The national average is 37.7. SDSU is holding opponents to 23.7, eighth-best out of 351 Division I teams.
It even helps in close games. Up four with 14.4 seconds left, Fisher called timeout to instruct his players, with only four team fouls, to burn clock by twice fouling intentionally. That took six seconds off the clock, and it wasn’t until 3.5 seconds left that Long Beach State managed to get up a shot.
This is something extremely difficult to get an entire team to do.
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