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Originally Posted by the_meanstrosity
What's an injured player doing on the court in the first place? If the player is too injured to shoot free throws then they should be on the bench rather than on the court.
And as other posters have stated, there's plenty of reason (ejection, technical foul, etc) for a college coach to not send a 'goon' on the court to hack a player. Yes there's a chance the rule could be exploited, but there's no doubt that teams could exploit the previous rule so nothing is really lost from the change.
I do believe this rule is a bit of an overkill and like yourself don't like that the rule gives the opposing coach the choice of shooter. My take on the Tiller situation is that if he was too injured to shoot free throws then he should never been substituted back into the game immediately following the free throws. The fact is that after the Marquette game, Tiller was a 50% free throw shooter which means he was nowhere near as effective. So by the numbers, Missouri certainly gained an advantage placing a better free throw shooter at the line. It also shows that Tiller did truly tweak his injury, but you have to wonder could he have shot the free throws since he was able to continue playing after the foul shots were taken. Mike Anderson would have probably been able to avoid this situation had he simply kept Tiller out of the game for a few minutes. That's my only gripe with Anderson in this instance.
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Tiller had an injury on that hand, but it wasn't bothering him until he was hacked on the shot. When Marquette fouled him, it turned a sprain into two completely torn ligaments, which he played with for the rest of the tourney. I'm surprised he even shot 50% after that. The previous rule made perfect sense in that instance. Had Tiller not been hurt on the play, he would have knocked those shots down. Since ligaments were torn on that play, the coach who's player was injured SHOULD have the right to put in a new player.
He was put back in for defensive purposes. He wasn't going to shoot the rest of that game under any circumstances. You don't need to be able to shoot to play defense. I'm surprised a basketball fan doesn't know that.