Mike Celizic

John Calipari’s done a heckuva job in Memphis, and I’m reasonably sure he doesn’t mind if I mention it.

I’m pretty confident he won’t object if I forget that the Memphis attack or dribble-drive offense was invented by Vance Walberg at Pepperdine and give Calipari credit.

And I just know he’ll swell with pride if I express awe with the size and speed and skills of his players and their ability to hit shots from everywhere on the floor.

I know this because he pretty much said that’s what he wants to hear about his offense. If I want to throw in that Memphis is on its third straight 30-win season and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, he’ll dig his toe in the carpet and mutter an embarrassed, “Aw, shucks,” as if it weren’t nothin’ at all.

But he doesn’t want to hear about Memphis’ free-throw shooting.

“Everybody, all they want to talk about is our free-throw shooting,” Calipari said in a conference call the other day. “I don’t know why. I come back to the conclusion that maybe they haven’t seen our team play, nor do they really know and the easy thing to talk about off the stat sheet is our free throws. Maybe I’m wrong though.”

From the sound of that, you’d think that free-throw shooting, an esoteric part of the game that most kids don’t learn until they’re out of diapers, is a sore spot with Calipari, who, now that Roy Williams has a trophy in the lobby of the Dean Dome, is the holder of the title Greatest Coach Never to Win an NCAA Title.

In fact, he reacts to questions about free-throw shooting the way Sergio Garcia reacts to questions about his putting. I guess that’s to be expected. The Tigers can’t shoot free throws and Garcia can’t putt. They also can’t win major championships.

There’s a connection there — the inability to hit foul shots and the lack of a national title — and Calipari knows it. He says it doesn’t matter, and maybe some day it won’t. But until that day arrives, people are going to point it out.

He can argue from now until tulips bloom at the South Pole (still at least three years away) that people who pick on the Tigers’ woeful foul shooting are missing the big picture, and it won’t make a difference, because he’s wrong.

Memphis has but one loss this season, but few people are talking about the Tigers as the favorite to win it all. One reason they’re not is Calipari’s history, which is one of regular-season excellence and postseasons that end too soon. A bigger one is that in tight games between great teams, the winner is often the team that can get to the line and hit its shots.

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I understand why he doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s the same reason the Red Sox hated having to talk about not being able to win the World Series for 86 years and why the Cubs still hate that same subject after 100 years of hearing about it. Every time it comes up, it reinforces the idea in the minds of his players. Shooting free throws — or putting — is mostly a mental thing. You’ll be fine at it during practice, but the instant it counts, you start thinking about the process instead of just doing it. And the more you’re reminded of it, the more you think about it, the less able you are to do it.

I even feel sorry for his players, because it’s horrible to be standing at the line with the ball in your hands and all those reminders of failure rattling around in your head. But it’s not my job to insulate them from the knowledge that, as a team, they’re shooting 59.6 percent from the line this year, which is great — if you’re Shaquille O’Neal — and awful if you’re anybody else, including a junior-high team.

Moreover, Calipari’s recent teams have a history of putting up more bricks than the third little pig at the free-throw line. And anytime a team has a consistent weakness in its arsenal, it goes straight to the coach.

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It’s no miracle or stroke of luck that some coaches always have teams that are great from the line and others have teams that are always bad. Shooting free throws isn’t like leaping or running or making athletic moves. It’s a simple skill, and anybody who can walk and whistle at the same time can learn to do it.

It’s too late to teach Memphis now. They may have a game where they shoot lights out — or at least lights dimmed — from the line, but they are what they are, and that’s a lousy bunch of free-throw shooters. And they got that way by working at it.

I’m sure Calipari has his team practice free throws, but there’s that old line about practice not making perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. Whatever they’re doing, it’s not working.

So go ahead and be touchy about the subject, John. Go ahead and accuse those who bring it up of not being aware of the nuances of the wonderful game your kids play — and it is genuinely terrific. It’s just that sometimes the most important thing about understanding anything is having a firm grasp of the obvious.

And this is what’s obvious about Memphis the past three years under Calipari: They’ve got three straight 33-win seasons and no titles. They do everything great except shoot free throws.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

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