Mizzou-Baylor: Statistical Applause

Nice win.  It was a game of runs, as expected, and in the end Mizzou's depth and home-court advantage did the deed for the Tigers.  Actually, no.  Mizzou's starters and home-court advantage won the game.  The Mizzou bench was surprisingly thin and ineffective.

Great crowd...even if some of the major donors whose seats are on camera at all times were extremely noticeably absent.

To the numbers!

• Against a team that would play six guards if they could, you had to figure that the BCI would be an insanely important figure, and sure enough...it was turnovers and passing (and free throws, and both of Mizzou's big men going crazy) that made the difference.  Mizzou was more aggressive on both sides of the court.
• They were more aggressive on the boards as well.  Needless to say, when Mizzou wins the BCI AND the rebounding battle, chances are they're going to win about 99.8% of the time.
• After a career of absolutely murdering Mizzou, we'll say yesterday was a regression to the mean for Curtis Jerrells, whose line of 5 points on 10 shots, and 2 assists to 9 turnovers, really put Baylor in a bind.  Granted, Jerrells is still basically Sex Panther against us (60% of the time, it works every time)...
  
  ...but it was nice that he's capable of not killing us sometimes.
  
  (Sorry, after watching that movie again last night, I was bound and determined to make a Sex Panther reference...that was the best I could do.)

* 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.

• Statistics say that when Leo Lyons plays like a Lottery pick, DeMarre is at his Junkyard Doggiest, and JT Tiller threatens to mess around and get a triple double, Mizzou is damn near unstoppable.  Go figure.
• And seriously...you know you had a bunch of guys show up bigtime when the dude who scored 30 points ended up with the third-most game score points.
• Mizzou's starters contribued 81 of Mizzou's 89 game score points...not exactly the common trend.  Mizzou's rotation of 10-11 guys was basically a 7-man rotation, with only Denmon and Lawrence playing more than 7 minutes off the bench.
• Laurence Bowers: 4 minutes.  Because DeMarre and Leo were so lights out, and because Ramsey (7 minutes) and Safford (5) barely played either, I won't complain too much, but I'm just going to continue to list his minutes each game.

vs Big 12
Mizzou: 5-2

• Baylor's craptastic 3-point shooting performance (6-for-23) regulated the 3pt% allowed figures a bit after K-State couldn't miss.
• Speaking of K-State...feeling better about that loss after they went down to Austin and won.
• And quietly, Mizzou has moved above 70% FT shooting in league play.  A welcome improvement.
  

• DeMarre can still be neutralized by teams with lots of size (who can't?), but he really has to be getting a serious all-conference look here, just for his all-around stats (and 17 PPG).

Rachel Phelps Update: five pieces of the puzzle (i.e. wins to basically clinch an NCAA Tourney bid) to go.