Off to San Padre we go...

Mizzou 99, Chattanooga 56

Reactions:

• Forcing 29 turnovers is impressive enough, but...with 24 steals?  Wow.  Not a ton of unforced errors there from Chattanooga, though I guess I should mention that some of those steals were a little too easy.
• Here's where the Expected Rebounds figure comes in handy -- Mizzou barely missed any shots, so their initially unimpressive 10 offensive rebounds becomes a little more understandable.
• A 70.6% True Shooting percentage?  Sheesh.  Anything over about 55% is pretty solid, so needless to say, 70% is pretty ridiculous.  But when Kimmeh's hot, the numbers will get pretty ridiculous.

Player stats after the jump.

Player Stats

* 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.

• Lots of players making lots of contributions here.  Obviously Kimmeh and Denmon combined for a good chunk of the offense, at least in the first half, but guys like Taylor, Ramsey, Bowers, and Paul filled up the box score pretty well.  None better on a game-by-game basis than Bowers, of course.
  
• Good to see Safford and Paul showing some offensive range, though I'm still mad at Paul for hogging the shots at the end.  Okay, I'm not actually mad, but still.
• I mentioned less than a week ago that getting out of town might do Kimmeh some good.  Strike that.  He's doing just fine here.

Keys to the Game Revisited

From Yesterday's preview.

1. Offensive Rebounds.  Well, when you barely miss any shots, offensive rebounds become less of an issue.  Regardless, against a relatively big Chattanooga team, Mizzou broke even on the boards.  You always want to see a little better than breaking even against lesser competition, but oh well.
   
   
2. Turnovers.  Mizzou committed a few too many (18, 4 from Ramsey, 3 from Safford and Paul) but forced a metric ton.  Chattanooga was solid offensively in the paint, but they very much struggled to get it into the paint, committing turnovers on 29 of their 77(ish) possessions.
   
   
3. Keith Ramsey.  Dude is a FORCE on the full-court press.  He looks so much more confident and aggressive on defense this year, which is fantastic.  He just needs to do a little better with the ball--his four turnovers negated a good chunk of his defensive success.
   

Summary

They're 3-0 and unchallenged heading to South Padre, and they've been RIDICULOUSLY entertaining to watch.  That's pretty much all we can ask for.