LEXINGTON, Ky. _ When Reid Travis was fouled with 18 seconds left in Kentucky's tense NCAA Tournament round-of-32 contest with Wofford, the Wildcats' season hung in the balance on his trip to the foul line.
Up 58-51 with 3:36 left, UK had wobbled down the stretch and seen Wofford erase all but two points from the Wildcats' lead.
As Travis received the ball at the foul line with the Cats leading 58-56, a "game slipping away" feeling had begun to waft through the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena.
There had been a time in Travis' college basketball career, which the last thing anyone rooting for his team would have wanted to see was the 6-foot-8, 238-pound post player going to the foul line with an NCAA Tournament game riding on the outcome.
When Travis began playing for Stanford in 2014-15, his foul shooting was just this side of abysmal.
"I was a poor foul shooter," he says.
As a college freshman, Travis made only 45.9 percent (39 of 85) of his foul shots. During the following season, which ended for Travis after eight games due to injury, he shot 48 percent (24 of 50) from the line.
As a low-post player with an aggressive offensive mindset and a physical style of play, Travis knew he was going to be fouled a lot. He understood his inability to make foul shots was a major liability.
"I knew the way I played, as aggressive and physical as I play, that was something I couldn't have in my game, it could be a negative," Travis said.
So Travis went to work. He changed the mechanics of his foul shot. He settled on a free-throw routine and became comfortable repeating it.
Mostly, he got in the gym and shot free throws _ lots and lots of free throws.
"I really put in a lot of reps," Travis says. "I changed my shot after my sophomore year, just put thousands and thousands of reps in. And I continue to work on it, just breathe in, just try and do the same routine every time."
The result of all that work has been consistent improvement. Travis shot 65.2 percent (118 of 181) from the line as a Stanford redshirt sophomore in 2016-17; last season as a junior, he hit 67.5 (164 of 243) from the line for the Cardinal.
On Saturday, the graduate transfer faced college basketball's ultimate test of a foul shooter _ taking free throws in the climactic seconds of a close NCAA Tournament game.
Travis drained the first foul shot.
And he sank the second.
"I was confident," Travis said. "When you've put up as many (foul) shots as I have, you just go up there and it is second nature."
Travis' free throws secured what became a 62-56 UK victory over Wofford. It gave Kentucky (29-6) a berth in the Midwest Region semifinals Friday around 9:59 p.m. EDT against No. 3 seed Houston (33-3).
Going into Friday night's game, Travis is now making 73.9 percent (99 of 134) of his free throws for UK.
I asked Travis on Saturday if, during all those thousands of reps remaking his foul shot, if he ever let himself imagine he was shooting with a NCAA Tournament game on the line.
"I wish I could say it was as storybook as that," he said with a laugh. "It was just a lot of work."
The transformational benefits that can come from hard work being the lesson reinforced when Reid Travis sank the foul shots Saturday that extended Kentucky's season.
