Study Hall: Black & Gold Game

Since the basketball team is still in preseason mode, I figured I should give the Study Hall format a scrimmage of its own, right? Analyzing the box score from the Black & Gold Game is totally normal, right? Ri ... right?

So we should probably start with the rosters for each side, just so you know what you're looking at:

Black Team: Phil Pressey (5'10, 175, So.), Keion Bell (6'3, 200, Sr., REDSHIRTING IN 2011-12), Marcus Denmon (6'3, 185, Sr.), Kim English (6'6, 200, Sr.), Ricardo Ratliffe (6'8, 240, Sr.), Jarrett Sutton (6'4, 196, Sr., walk-on), Andy Rosburg (6'8, Sr., walk-on)

Gold Team: Mike Dixon (6'1, 185, Jr.), Matt Pressey (6'2, 195, Sr.), Earnest Ross (6'5, 222, Jr., REDSHIRTING IN 2011-12), Kadeem Green (6'8, 210, RSFr.), Steve Moore (6'9, 267, Sr.), Danny Feldman (6'9, 215, So., , walk-on, REDSHIRTING IN 2011-12), Tony Lester (5'10, 179, Fr., walk-on)

So right off the bat, you see that the Black team has the scoring (Denmon, English) while the Gold team has the rebounding (Moore and Green, with English serving as the Black team's power forward). That's exactly how it played out in the box score.

Black 71, Gold 61

As expected, the Gold team outrebounded the Black team (Green and Ross each had seven rebounds -- Green had five offensive boards, Ross four) and outhustled them (Matt Pressey: five steals), but Black just had too much scoring punch and pulled away late. The game was tied at 58-58, but led by eight points by English and seven by Ratliffe, Black went on a 15-5 run to take the game.

Mizzou Player Stats

(Definitions at the bottom of the post.)

• Obviously this team is very, very different when Kim English is making five of eight three-pointers. If we've learned nothing else over the last three years, it's that.
• Earnest Ross seems like a wing Mizzou hasn't had in a while (since Marshall Brown, maybe?), a true No. 3 slasher to takes mostly two-pointers and hits the glass but doesn't look lost on the wing.
• Matt Pressey did not shoot well, and is responsible for all of the world's ills (/Gottleib'd), but needless to say, you can make up for an off-night from the field with five steals and four assists.
• Phil Pressey grabbed six rebounds, all defensive. Expect a lot more of this this year; I do think Mizzou will press the tempo at times -- I am working off of the assumption that Frank Haith, Ernie Nestor and company are not dummies and know their personnel -- but much less at the expense of rebounding. Pressey is a wonderful rebounder for his size, and I do think we'll see him grab quite a few more defensive rebounds this year.
• Steve Moore took seven shots! Granted, he missed five of them (and his only free throw), but still! (And in STEEEEEVE fashion, he also blocked three shots and registered two thefts.
• When Mike Dixon is off, he is waaaaay off. He and Ross had to handle the scoring load for Gold, and he just didn't perform very well.
• Keion Bell just sort of blended into the scenery. I assume that will not be the case this time next year.

Nice to see Denmon's Usage Rate over 20%. It has always been a Catch-22 with him -- he lets the game come to him better than just about anybody I've ever seen, but the downside of that is occasional invisibility. He was still trying to find that line last year. It'll be interesting to see how he does under a new staff.

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AdjGS: a take-off of the Game Score metric (definition here) accepted by a lot of basketball stat nerds.  It takes points, assists, rebounds (offensive & defensive), steals, blocks, turnovers and fouls into account to determine an individual's "score" for a given game.  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.

Usage%: This "estimates the % of team possessions a player consumes while on the floor" (via).  The usage of those possessions is determined via a formula using field goal and free throw attempts, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.  The higher the number, the more prevalent a player is (good or bad) in a team's offensive outcome.  As you would expect, someone like Kim English has a high Usage%, while Steve Moore has an extremely low one.

Floor%: Via Basketball-Reference.com: Floor % answers the question, "when Player X uses a possession, what is the probability that his team scores at least 1 point?".  The higher the Floor%, the more frequently the team probably scores when the given player is involved.

Touches/Possession: Using field goal attempts, free throw attempts, assists and turnovers, Touches attempt to estimate "the number of times a player touched the ball in an attacking position on the floor."  Take the estimated touches and divide it by the estimated number of possessions for which a player was on the court, and you get a rough idea of how many times a player touched the ball in a given possession.  For point guards, you'll see the number in the 3-4 range.  For shooting guards and wings, 2-3.  For Steve Moore, 1.30.  You get the idea.

Anyway, using the Touches figure, we can estimate the percentage of time a player "in an attacking position" passes, shoots, turns the ball over, or gets fouled.