SUCCESS RATES OF UNDERHAND AND OVERHAND FREE-THROWS AS NOVEL SKILLS

In the pursuit of scoring as many points as possible during basketball competitions, most effective freethrow shooting techniques were explored. This study sought to determine whether the underhand or overhand basketball free-throw shooting style was naturally more prone to success than the other. Total participants (N=29) were 15 male and 14 female undergraduate students, who were at least 18 years of age (average age was 23.98) with no prior basketball shooting experience. Through a counterbalanced design, each participant shot 25underhand free-throws on one day and 25 overhand free-throws on a different day. No significant differences between the number of successful overhand and underhand shots were observed for attempts 1-13 when compared to attempts 14-25. Males averaged .57 more successful attempts overhand than underhand. Females averaged .33 less successful attempts overhand than underhand.Overall, as a group, the performance of both underhand and overhand shooting was positively correlated (.28), representing a trend suggesting that if a participant shot well underhand they also shot well overhand, indicating that it is unlikely that either the overhand or underhand shooting style is more naturally more prone to success than the other; hence, free-throw shooting success may be more dependent on repetition than style.