Study Hall: Mizzou 76, kansas 67

Most of the time my emotional state is pretty stable when watching sports.

That is never the case when Missouri has a lead over the kansas jayhawks, in any sport, but especially in men’s basketball.

I’ve been conditioned by a torturous 20+ seasons of watching Bill Self smugly run out efficiency machines dressed in blue and trimmed with red. And since the Border War has been rekindled, thankfully, the muscle memory of nerves takes over the moment I wake up on game day and they stick with me until the game is over.

In 2021 I knew the game was over pretty much at tip. In 2022 I had far more hope before tip, but that too didn’t take long. Last year there wasn’t much hope before tipoff, but they played ok and kU wasn’t great so I stuck with a little bit of hope. Yesterday, I really thought Mizzou had a shot. They were long and athletic, they got to the free throw line a lot, they were at home. But the only problem going into the game was I was having a hard time visualizing the win. What would it look like?

After all, it had been so long since Missouri had beat kansas.

So as the game wore on, and Mizzou’s lead ballooned and then shrank, and then extended again, the feeling never changed. When did I finally relax?

Not when Mark Mitchell’s three went down. But when Hunter Dickson missed a put back attempt and fouled Josh Gray who corralled the rebound. I knew Mizzou was good by that point. Then as fans streamed onto the court, it was important to take the moment to just enjoy it.

I know this is a statistical analysis post. I’m a fan of analytics, quite obviously. But I don’t watch sports, and in particular, basketball, because of the numbers. I love this game. Numbers can tell part of the story, but they don’t account for Tamar Bates, Mark Mitchell, and Aidan Shaw being KCK kids facing off against their actual home state school. They don’t account for 15,000 people screaming their heads off when a skinny kid from Florida tips a pass into the air and ends up hanging on the rim after finishing a dunk. There’s no statistic for watching Dennis Gates call a timeout so Kansas players could exit safely knowing the court was about to be stormed.

Numbers show you a whole lotta things, but you don’t watch to see if your team can reach 1.20 ppp on offense, while improving on their defensive rebounding rate. You watch hoping to see something special. Against Kansas, Mizzou didn’t play their best game. But that didn’t matter because we saw something special.

• One of these days we’ll figure out rebounding: really, the only reason the game was close was the Jayhawks nabbed 16 boards, mostly because they were shooting so wildly bad. But total possessions Mizzou was +11, but they were -11 on FGAs. Making up the difference was their +20 trips to the line and shooting a healthy 83.9%.
• In some ways this was a very Dennis Gates-like game: the pace was in the 70s, Mizzou forced turnovers, valued the ball themselves (they had a few late turnovers which made things look uglier than it really was. If the jump shooting was a touch better the assist total would have been higher and the BCI would have been a super ugly blowout.
• The impact of the team size and length on defense: and how that length forced a very good basketball team into a host of ball handling errors, it really looked like an FSU team from 10 years ago.

Your Trifecta: Tamar Bates, Anthony Robinson II, Mark Mitchell

On the season: Mark Mitchell 13, Anthony Robinson II 12, Tamar Bates 12, Caleb Grill 7, Marques Warrick 4, Tony Perkins 3, Trent Pierce 3, Aidan Shaw 1

What can be said about Tamar Bates that wasn’t said already. Bates was the best player on the floor, and had it not been for a couple extra turnovers, his game score probably eclipses Ant Robinson’s from the Cal game. But it really should be noted that for the first time this season Gates played a very short bench. Sure, 11 players saw action, but four saw more than 80% of the minutes, another was at 75%, and only Aidan Shaw hit 30% off the bench. This from a team who has led the country in bench scoring.

Leaning hard on Tamar Bates (34 minutes), Mark Mitchell (33 minutes), and Anthony Robinson (34 minutes), Gates didn’t let his best players rest too much. But he still let them rest! Last season, Sean East saw plenty of 38-40 minute nights. 34 minutes is a lot, but it’s doable.

Mark Mitchell’s night wasn’t the most efficient, but 12 FTAs, a steal and three blocks? I think that’s the kind of work Gates and his staff will take every night. Maybe Mark improves on his finishing around the rim, after all this staff has been good about developing guys to get better in that regard. But I thought his overall floor game was really very good.

I’m not sure how sustainable Bates and Mitchell at 30%+ usage AND 85% of the minutes will be long term, but if that’s your answer for kU, well, so be it. This also felt like a game where Caleb Grill simply being on the floor and making a couple threes, or simply providing the gravity of a three-point shot, might have made an even larger different. Bates and Mitchell found plenty of challenges at and around the rim, having someone to provide some spacing doesn’t completely resolve a lurking Dickinson or KJ Adams, but it might make the path to the rim a bit cleaner.

Appreciation paragraph for Josh Gray and his effort. Mizzou knew exactly what they were getting in the big man when he was lured from the portal to Columbia, and Gray has fulfilled his promise. He did a great job of making Hunter Dickinson’s life miserable for the most part, Dickinson is one of College Basketball’s best villains so it’s perfect he ended up playing for Bill Self. But Hunter played 34 minutes and did score 19 points, however his ORtg was a pretty poor 100 thanks to 7 turnovers. And only one free throw attempt. Meanwhile, Gray’s unspectacular line of 32 minutes and 7 points were capped by a long 2-point field goal make (which should have been a three), and two big free throw makes when the game was still close enough to be in the balance. And of course that’s ignoring his 10 rebounds. That’s getting your money’s worth out of the big fella.

While the rotation was hemmed in a big way, I don’t necessarily think that’s going to be the way for Gates as he moves closer to SEC play. I get the impression he wanted this game more than anything, it was impressed upon the players, and they played with a white-hot intensity that kU was simply unable to match.

Coming up Mizzou was LIU on Saturday, and Jacksonville State on the following Tuesday, before heading to St. Louis and Braggin’ Rights. You’re likely going to see a much deeper bench in those games and more of a return of what we’ve seen. I would guess we’ll see some more of Annor Boateng as they try to get him spun up some more. And Jacob Crews will get some more opportunities to make outside shots. But the ceiling for this team has been established.

The SEC is going to be a grind, but Missouri will absolutely be a factor in conference play.

True Shooting Percentage (TS%): Quite simply, this calculates a player’s shooting percentage while taking into account 2FG%, 3FG%, and FT%. The formula is Total Points / 2 * (FGA + (0.475+FTA)). The 0.475 is a Free Throw modifier. KenPomeroy and other College Basketball sites typically use 0.475, while the NBA typically uses 0.44. That’s basically what TS% is. A measure of scoring efficiency based on the number of points scored over the number of possessions in which they attempted to score, more here.

Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%): This is similar to TS%, but takes 3-point shooting more into account. The formula is FGM + (0.5 * 3PM) / FGA

So think of TS% as scoring efficiency, and eFG% as shooting efficiency, more here.

Expected Offensive Rebounds: Measured based on the average rebounds a college basketball team gets on both the defensive and offensive end. This takes the overall number of missed shots (or shots available to be rebounded) and divides them by the number of offensive rebounds and compares them with the statistical average.

AdjGS: A take-off of the Game Score metric (definition here) accepted by a lot of basketball stat nerds. It takes points, assists, rebounds (offensive & defensive), steals, blocks, turnovers and fouls into account to determine an individual’s “score” for a given game. The “adjustment” in Adjusted Game Score is simply matching the total game scores to the total points scored in the game, thereby redistributing the game’s points scored to those who had the biggest impact on the game itself, instead of just how many balls a player put through a basket.

%Min: This is easy, it’s the percentage of minutes a player played that were available to them. That would be 40 minutes, or 45 if the game goes to overtime.

Usage%: This “estimates the % of team possessions a player consumes while on the floor” (via sports-reference.com/cbb). The usage of those possessions is determined via a formula using field goal and free throw attempts, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. The higher the number, the more prevalent a player is (good or bad) in a team’s offensive outcome.

Offensive Rating (ORtg): Similar to Adjusted game score, but this looks at how many points per possession a player would score if they were averaged over 100 possessions. This combined with Usage Rate gives you a sense of impact on the floor.

IndPoss: This approximates how many possessions an individual is responsible for within the team’s calculated possessions.

ShotRate%: This is the percentage of a team’s shots a player takes while on the floor.

AstRate%: Attempts to estimate the number of assists a player has on teammates made field goals when he is on the floor. The formula is basically AST / (((MinutesPlayed / (Team MP / 5)) * Team FGM) – FGM).

TORate%: Attempts to estimate the number of turnovers a player commits in their individual possessions. The formula is simple: TO / IndPoss

Floor%: Via sports-reference.com/cbb: Floor % answers the question, “When a Player uses a possession, what is the probability that his team scores at least 1 point?”. The higher the Floor%, the more frequently the team probably scores when the given player is involved.

In attempting to update Study Hall, I’m moving away from Touches/Possession and moving into the Rates a little more. This is a little experimental so if there’s something you’d like to see let me know and I’ll see if there’s an easy visual way to present it.