It's not going on the road that bothers UL men's basketball coach Robert Lee and his Ragin' Cajun squad.

They don't mind traveling the distance between Lafayette and Denton, Texas, where the Cajuns will head Wednesday to face North Texas in the first round of the Sun Belt Conference Tournament.

The more fearsome distance for the UL players is the stretch between the black stripe at the top of the lane and the orange hoop. It's that free-throw length between the black and the orange that has the Cajuns seeing red and feeling blue.

UL's 72-70 home loss to North Texas Saturday, one that dropped them to the No. 12 seed and sent them into another game against the Mean Green, can be directly attributed to free throws. The Cajuns were 20-of-39 from the line - missing 13 of their first 18 - and had three key misses in the last 73 seconds and two in the last 23 ticks.

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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com