GREENSBORO - J.J. Redick is the best free-throw shooter in the history of the ACC. In his first 137 games at Duke, the senior went 0-for-2 on a trip to the free-throw line just twice. Redick matched that number against George Washington Saturday.
For the game, he shot 2-for-7, setting a career-worst with five misses in a game. The first question many asked was whether the career-91.2 percent free-throw shooter had ever missed that many in a single game before.
"Probably when I was eight and I shot two-handed," Redick said. "It's something that's happened a few times this year, where I've missed multiple shots. It's something where I just have to focus more. There's so much going on in the game and I just have to concentrate a little bit better."
Not that he was using it as an excuse, but Redick may have also been affected by the frigid temperature inside the Greensboro Coliseum.
Every time he went to the bench, he was immediately draped in his warmup jersey and handed a heat pack, which he held for the duration of each break.
"I was freezing," Redick said. "It was colder than heck in there and my first two that I missed at the beginning of the game, I couldn't really feel the ball it was so cold."
Redick's teammates and coaches were far from concerned about the shooting of their leader. After Redick's fellow first-team All-ACC performer Shelden Williams went 9-for-9 from the line in the game, Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski joked that he would ask Williams to show Redick a thing or two about how to shoot from the line.
"We're going to have [Shelden] work with J.J. a little this week," Krzyzewski said. "I've been waiting four years to needle him about free throws."
Redick wears leg sleeve for extra support
Observers of the game may have also noticed that the ACC Player of the Year came out from the locker room Saturday at the start of the game wearing a blue sleeve on his left shin.
There is no reason to be concerned about Redick's health, though, the senior told reporters. He also made it clear that his leg had not affected his free throw shooting.
"I bruised my shin twice against Carolina and got hit on it again in the ACC Tournament," Redick said. "Against Southern, I hit it twice in the second half, so today I just wanted to put the sleeve on it, a little more support, some extra padding, that's all it was."
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