Mizzou-ISU: Statistical...Attack on the Clones

Sorry...couldn't come up with a better title than that.

So if the Colorado game didn't wash away the bitter taste of the Nebraska loss, I'm going to go ahead and assume that this one did.  Mizzou's now played two teams they should have beaten by 15-20 points...and beaten them by 45 and 31.  Nebraska was a step back...and these two games have been two healthy steps forward.

• Whereas Mizzou beat Colorado by forcing an insane amount of turnovers, they beat Iowa State with good non-turnover defense, forcing bad shots and grabbing the rebounds.  Oh yeah, and by making 13 of 25 3-pointers.  Can't forget that part.
• ISU big men Craig Brackins and Justin Hamilton had a combined 23 points on 10-for-20 shooting (50.0%).  The rest of the team?  23 points on 8-for-34 shooting (23.5%).
• A strangely high number of defensive rebounds in this game.  Mizzou hovered around the expected level of offensive rebounds, but they completely shut the door on ISU, giving them one chance to score just about every trip down the court.

So I'm switching up the game this time.  Check out what's now in place of the "EqPts" measure!  It's Game Score (with a slight adjustment)!

AdjGS = a take-off of the Game Score metric (definition here) accepted by a lot of basketball stat nerds.  It does the same thing my previous measure of choice did (it takes points, assists, rebounds (offensive & defensive), steals, blocks, turnovers and fouls into account to determine an individual's "score" for a given game), only the formula is more used and accepted.  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.

• Welcome back, Good Leo.
• Zaire Taylor Shot Watch: 9!  And he made five of them (plus three of three free throws)!  Shoot more, Zaire!
• I've mentioned how market corrections happen on the basketball too.  Well, Laurence Bowers just experienced his own market correction.  No idea how he only managed five minutes in a 31-point win, but he really didn't do anything to indicate that another five minutes would have produced anything positive.
• Matt Lawrence had three more steals than 3-pointers.  Weird.  Dude was throwing his body all over the court--he was born to be a great bench player.
• JT Tiller chose a pretty good time to revert to Old JT form, filling up the Fouls line of the box score at a very high rate.
• Today's assists leader: DeMarre Carroll.  Just thought I'd point that out.

vs Major Conference teams (and Xavier)
Mizzou: 5-3

• After today's lovely performance on the boards, Mizzou has almost broken even in the rebounding department.  And remember--these are only against the 'real' teams on the schedule (assuming you count all major conference teams as 'real').
• Mizzou has crept back ahead in the FT shooting department...somehow.

Let's compare per-minute stats for guys at each position (sans the walk-on and coach's son).

Point Guard

Zaire Taylor - 0.35 GS/Min
Miguel Paul - 0.06

Shooting Guard

J.T. Tiller - 0.43
Marcus Denmon - 0.37

Small Forward

Kimmie English - 0.48
Matt Lawrence - 0.20

Power Forward/Center (since there's really no difference with this team)

Laurence Bowers - 0.65
Leo Lyons - 0.56
DeMarre Carroll - 0.52
Keith Ramsey - 0.42
Justin Safford - 0.29
Steve Moore - 0.02

Honestly, the current minutes distribution is very much in line with who's contributing the most, so kudos to Mike Anderson for that.  Really, the only discrepancy is in the minutes given to Laurence Bowers and those given to Justin Safford.  Bowers probably won't continue at his 0.65 pace with more minutes--they will continue to regulate--but until we find out where he actually falls, Safford should probably see some of his minutes siphoned--we pretty much know what he has to offer, and while he's got a solid amount of skill, it's pretty clear that I think Bowers has a bit more.