Know Your Bitter In-State Rival: UMKC

Three more games until conference play -- two mid-week cupcakes and an interesting Saturday showdown with Georgia.  What challenges do the 'Roos of UMKC present tomorrow night?  Let's take a look.

UMKC: 7-5

Ken Pomeroy Stats

Where the Roos are weakest

First of all, I should say that I'm intrigued about where UMKC is going with third-year coach Matt Brown.  They've got a young roster, and let's face it -- seven wins at this stage of the season is pretty good for UMKC.  It will probably take him another year or two to make this team a Summit League contender, but they seem to be headed in the right direction.

That said, they don't really match up very well with Mizzou.  For the most part, Mizzou's weaknesses are their weaknesses, and their strengths are Mizzou's strengths.  They are not very good at all in the offensive rebounds category, meaning they are not well-equipped to take advantage of Mizzou's single biggest weakness.  On defense, they are terrible at avoiding fouls, meaning Mizzou might actually get to the line some despite themselves.  In all, this is a decent offensive team and a terrible defensive team.  They give up far too many open shots to put a serious challenge into Mizzou.

Where the Roos are best

The two areas where the Roos might succeed a bit are in defensive rebounding and drawing fouls.  Like Austin Peay, they draw a lot of contact, and this could be another situation where Mizzou is in the bonus pretty early on.  As I mentioned previously, Mizzou only has one guy -- Keith Ramsey -- who shoots more than 0.40 free throws per field goal attempt.  UMKC has six.  Guard Trey McKinney-Jones shoots a whopping 0.60.  This is an area where UMKC can get some free points.

Like Arkansas-Pine Bluff, the Roos are also pretty decent in the defensive rebounding category.  Mizzou has been at least decent in terms of getting second chances on offense, but this will be a solid challenge for them if the shots aren't falling for them like they were against APSU.  Then again, with UMKC's defense, the shots might fall just fine.

UMKC's Season to Date

• Wins
  Truman State (80-33)
  Lincoln U. (78-52)
  at North Dakota (70-63)
  at Centenary (84-83)
  at Houston Baptist (102-87)
  Central Arkansas (78-67)
  SIU-Edwardsville (63-54)
  
• Losses
  at Nebraska (48-70)
  Idaho State (65-68)
  at Oral Roberts (57-68)
  Wichita State (52-73)
  at SLU (54-61)
  

Again, for UMKC, this hasn't been too bad a season.  Obviously the home loss to Idaho State isn't very encouraging, but they're 3-3 on the road and at the very least played Mizzou conqueror ORU relatively tight.  They hung tight with Nebraska for about 12 minutes before the Huskers pulled away, eventually leading by 28.  If Mizzou is committing some early fouls, I could see the same scenario playing out tomorrow night -- UMKC stays close for a while before giving in to the pressure.

UMKC Player Stats

* AdjGS = a take-off of the Game Score metric (definition here) accepted by a lot of basketball stat nerds.  It redistributes a team's points based not only on points scored, but also by giving credit for assists, rebounds (offensive & defensive), steals, blocks, turnovers and fouls.  It is a stat intended to determine who had the biggest overall impact on the game itself, instead of just how many balls a player put through a basket.

• Another team full of great names, UMKC goes roughly 9-10 deep.  They have two solid players in LaTreze Mushatt and Trey McKinney-Jones and a decent scorer (and little else) in Jay Couisnard.  The offense flows through Couisnard and Mushatt, as they're the only players on the team who attempt more than 0.28 shots per minute.  McKinney-Jones is extremely efficient, but he seems to be a Zaire Taylor type, only shooting when he's wide open.
• This team does not play fast.  They only average 66.0 possessions per game, below the national average.  They're 6-0 when scoring over 65 points, but that's a bit misleading -- they only score over 65 points when their opponent is pretty turrible.
• Yes, they've got a Korver coming off the bench.  He's listed as a F/C, though as expected, over half of his shots are 3-pointers (25 3-point attempts to 17 2-pointers, shooting at a 36% clip from beyond the arc).  He's not much of a difference maker yet, but he's coming off of a nice game (11 points on 4-for-7 shooting against SIUE), and he'll probably mature and grow pretty well on this young team.
• And yes, they've got nobody over 215 pounds and only one player above 6'7.  They're a small team, which makes you figure they like to run.  Not true.

Keys to the Game

1. Show Up.  I would really like to see better early defensive intensity than what we saw Sunday against Austin Peay, but it's really not necessary.  As long as Mizzou is playing well on one side of the court or the other, they'll pull away pretty easily.  But as always, a complete egg-laying could make the game dangerous for at least a while.
   
   
2. Guard the 'Nard.  If UMKC somehow wins this game or keeps it much closer than it should be, Jay Couisnard is probably the reason why.  He doesn't bring a lot to the table beyond points (he's grabbed more than five rebounds just twice this year, and he's hit-or-miss on the passing, going over four assists three times and under two five times ... and he's gone over three turnovers five times), but he's scored in double digits in all but one game this year.  He scored 24 against Houston Baptist and 21 against North Dakota, both on the road.  He draws a lot of fouls and could rack up the points if Mizzou is unfocused.  But if J.T. Tiller turns into Jesus Tyrannosaurus on him, he's probably not much of a concern.  Against Nebraska, he took 11 shots to score 11 points and had 1 assist and 3 turnovers before fouling out.
   
   (And yes, I really just said "guard the 'Nard."  I don't know what came over me.)
   
   
3. Block Out.  Mizzou's biggest weakness -- defensive rebounding -- probably won't come into play a ton here, but I'm going to get pretty cranky if nobody gets a body on Spencer Johnson or Korver.  They're UMKC's best offensive rebounders, and there's no excuse for letting them get too many second chances.  No second chances = no chance for the Roos.
   

Prediction

For the love of god, I really want to see John Underwood play more before conference play starts.  So do me a favor, guys, and knock these guys out early.  How does Mizzou 87, UMKC 58 sound?  Good?  Alright, go do it