Richmond 59, Mizzou 52

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• A buddy of mine (lionsden) saw both South Padre games and said that, for both teams, the rims in the convention center were brutal.  Credit Richmond for figuring out how to win anyway, but both teams' shooting numbers were at least a bit artificially low, both for this game and the ODU game Friday night, really.
  
  And you can see that a bit in the numbers.  No matter how good the defense is, you're rarely going to see Zaire Taylor and J.T. Tiller go a combined 5-for-20 from inside the 3-point line over a two-game span, not to mention Mike "old-school, mid-range" Dixon going 1-for-7 from inside the line.  That's a 22.2% 2-point % for Mizzou's three best penetrating/finishing guards, and no matter how much of that is due to rims or good defense, obviously I'm not too concerned about that turning into a long-term slump.
  
  That said, we knew shooting could be an issue for this team, and obviously the trip to Texas did nothing to alleviate that concern.  Mizzou went a combined 8-for-31 (25.8%) from 3-point range, and while the rims certainly didn't help (I think it's telling that Mizzou only took 11 3's against Richmond after taking 20 against ODU -- they probably knew it was a lower-percentage shot than normal), Mizzou is more than capable of shooting 25% on 3-pointers with the friendliest rims in the world.
• Well, BCI is thus far a perfect predictor.  When they win the BCI battle, they're 4-0.  When they lose it, they're 0-1.  Obviously terrible shooting hurt the assist numbers, but regardless ... perfect predictor!
• Lionsden also mentioned that Richmond was abnormally patient in dealing with Mizzou's press, risking a 10-second call multiple times to make sure that no stupid pass was made, leading to an easy bucket.  This makes sense, as they are an extremely experienced team (of their top six players from a minutes perspective, three are juniors, three are seniors), but in the end, if Mizzou could have made some buckets, they'd have won.
• Another reasonably decent showing by Mizzou on the boards.  Richmond is a pretty big team, and Mizzou outdid them by one in terms of both expected rebounds and actual rebounds.  Laurence Bowers' five offensive rebounds were the single biggest cause for this.

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.

• Even when he scores only eight points, Laurence Bowers still makes by far the most statistical impact of anybody on the team.  As mentioned above, his five offensive rebounds were vital, even if Mizzou came up short.
• Kim English: 1-for-10 from 3-point range in South Padre.  In fact, the only person who made more than one was Mike Dixon (3-for-6).
• In a game that was within two points with seven seconds left, Mizzou got an estimated -4.5 points of contribution from Marcus Denmon and Miguel Paul.  I don't want to overstate that number, as box scores don't take into account drawn charges (why don't they???) or good defense, but still, they combined for one assist, three turnovers, one FG and an 0-for-3 line from the FT line.  Not the best game for the Mizzou bench.
• Your leading AdjSC scorers in Texas: Laurence Bowers (12.5 per game), J.T. Tiller (11.1), Kim English (9.7), Zaire Taylor (9.4), Keith Ramsey (7.9).

Summary

No matter how much analysis we do here, it all comes down to shooting.  Richmond stood up relatively well to Mizzou's press, and the game was very much played at Richmond's pace (60 possessions, instead of the 70-75 Mizzou prefers), but in the end, if Mizzou made shots they're capable of making, they'd have won.  This loss does not really affect me long-term, but it does raise some worry with a trip to Vanderbilt coming up next.  Now's the time when you want another couple of easy home games to get everybody's confidence back, but Mizzou does not have that opportunity.  Instead, now comes a very interesting three-game stretch: @Vanderbilt, Oregon, @Oral Roberts.  Go 2-1 here, and I still think this is easily a tournament team.  Slip up twice, however, and there's at least a smidge of worry.