Study Hall: Mizzou 92, California 53

Your Trifecta: Denmon-Moore-MPressey. Your Winner: are you kidding me? You'd have been laughed at for guessing Denmon-Moore-MPressey. This is the greatest Trifecta ever.

Because we are getting on the road, I can't spend a ton of time on this one, even though I really want to. The more I think about it, the more I realize that this is by far the best this team has looked in November in my time here. Even in 2001, the Tigers only did just well enough to start 9-0 (and as The Beef pointed out to me this morning, they looked half-awful against Iowa that year until the greatest 75 seconds or so ever at the end). You really do have to go back to the 1980s to match this.

After just five games, we obviously don't know what Frank Haith is capable of doing with this team over the course of an entire season (as the schedule begins to introduce some teams that are actually capable of punishing Mizzou on the glass even worse than Cal did), and we don't know if Mike Anderson would have done even better. (Probably not.) When you've got this level of experience, you are going to be capable of maintaining a pretty high level of play, but ... none of us knew this level was possible. I just hope we see a lot more of it this season. Considering we can find holes in the box score for both games, we can legitimately say that neither of these games represented Mizzou's absolutely top level. That is, to say the least, a bit exciting.

Mizzou 92, Cal 53

How To Prevent Poor Rebounding From Mattering:

1) Hold your opponents to a 40.3% True Shooting Percentage.
2) Toss up a 73.7% True Shooting Percentage of your own.

That'll pretty much do it. Amazingly, Mizzou shot 58.8% for the game despite the fact that Marcus Denmon and Phil Pressey combined to go 7-for-18, 2-for-9 from 3-point range.

Mizzou Player Stats

(Definitions at the bottom of the post.)

• Denmon's fast break points, rebounding and passing all allowed him to finish on top here despite the fact that his 3's weren't falling. It is the mark of a great player when you continue to produce when your best weapon is not clicking.
• STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVE.
• Matt Pressey seriously racked up some garbage time stats here, but he was still wonderful defensively before the shots started falling en masse late.
• Kim English still turns the ball over a decent amount, but wow is he playing some heady, tough, sound basketball this year. He's going straight up on his jumpers more often than not, he is drawing charge after charge, and he's showing some muscle on the glass.
• Ricardo Ratliffe was in foul trouble for a good portion of this game. And Mizzou won by 39.

To the checklist!

Marcus Denmon's Usage% needs to be 23% or higher. (Yes!)
Kim English's %T/O needs to be at 10% or lower. (No.)
Kim English's Floor% should be at 35% or higher. (Yes!)
Ricardo Ratliffe's %Fouled should be at least 10%. (No.)
Phil Pressey's Touches/Possession need to be 3.5 or better. (No.)
Mike Dixon's %Pass should be 55% or higher. (Yes!)
Steve Moore's Touches/Possession should be at least 1.0. (Yes!)

That's still only a 4-for-7 mark. Again, Mizzou could have played even better in this game. Kim English got a bit sloppy with the ball, Ratliffe didn't initiate much contact (with the ball, anyway), and Flip Pressey was a bit invisible. And yet ... again ... 39-point win. Sheesh.

Summary

I really don't know what else to say. I'm already ready for Villanova at the Garden in two weeks. Binghamton comes to town for an awkward mid-Sunday tipoff; I will be on the road coming back from Oklahoma at that time, but hopefully there's a decent crowd at Mizzou Arena to show appreciation for what we just saw. Because it was incredible.

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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.