Florida 83, Missouri: Study Hall

So ... yeah. I don't really want to write this post, and you don't want to read it. So we'll go quickly. And again, full disclaimer: I didn't see one second of this game. I was on vacation, dammit, and since Mizzou didn't even try on the glass (according to the numbers below), I don't have to try very hard here either.

Florida 83, Missouri 52

NCAA Basketball Stats

	Mizzou	Florida
Pace (No. of Possessions)	71.9
Points Per Possession (PPP)	0.72	1.15
Points Per Shot (PPS)	1.06	1.41
2-PT FG%	40.0%	67.5%
3-PT FG%	25.0%	42.1%
FT%	82.4%	62.5%
True Shooting %	46.0%	66.4%
	Mizzou	Florida
Assists	8	21
Steals	11	14
Turnovers	21	16
Ball Control Index (BCI) (Assists + Steals) / TO	0.90	2.19
	Mizzou	Florida
Expected Offensive Rebounds	12	9
Offensive Rebounds	6	7
Difference	-6	-2

Three offensive rebounds. Well, six, but three.

Mizzou missed a lot of shots and therefore had a lot of offensive rebound opportunities. And they grabbed three. Three more went out of bounds, so the official total was six. But they actually went up and grabbed three. Even without Laurence Bowers, even without much of Earnest Ross, that is incredibly unacceptable no matter who the opponent is. Three.

Honestly, as we'll see below...

...Mizzou was really, really lucky to score 52 points.

Mizzou Player Stats

NCAA Basketball

(Definitions at the bottom of the post.)

Player	AdjGS	GmSc/Min	Line
Keion Bell	27.7	1.20	23 Min, 14 Pts (5-6 FG, 4-4 FT), 2 Stl, 3 TO
Tony Criswell	15.3	0.64	24 Min, 8 Pts (2-7 FG, 1-4 3PT, 3-4 FT), 5 Reb
Stefan Jankovic	12.4	0.96	13 Min, 7 Pts (2-6 FG, 1-3 3PT, 2-2 FT), 3 Stl
Alex Oriakhi	8.0	0.42	19 Min, 4 Pts (1-2 FG, 2-3 FT), 2 Reb
Jabari Brown	6.0	0.16	37 Min, 16 Pts (5-18 FG, 4-11 3PT, 2-2 FT), 4 TO
Ryan Rosburg	0.3	0.01	23 Min, 1 Pt (0-1 FG, 1-2 FT), 4 Reb
Negus Webster-Chan	-0.3	-0.02	14 Min, 0 Pts (0-1 3PT), 2 Reb
Earnest Ross	-0.3	-0.03	9 Min, 0 Pts (0-1 3PT), 2 Reb
Danny Feldmann	-0.3	-0.09	3 Min, 0 Pts
Phil Pressey	-16.8	-0.48	35 Min, 2 Pts (1-7 FG, 0-4 3PT), 6 Ast, 2 Reb, 2 Stl, 10 TO

Player	Usage%	Floor%	Touches/ Poss.	%Pass	%Shoot	%Fouled	%T/O
Bell	24%	54%	2.2	32%	33%	18%	17%
Criswell	19%	35%	1.8	36%	43%	20%	0%
Jankovic	31%	31%	1.8	0%	69%	19%	12%
Oriakhi	12%	36%	0.8	0%	37%	45%	18%
Brown	32%	22%	1.7	0%	76%	7%	17%
Rosburg	6%	15%	0.4	0%	27%	45%	27%
NWC	4%	0%	0.2	0%	100%	0%	0%
Ross	11%	0%	0.6	0%	50%	0%	50%
Pressey	25%	17%	4.1	67%	13%	0%	19%

• Here's where redistributing the Game Score points gets kind of funky. When four of 10 players log a negative Game Score (and when one has a stat line as awful as Phil Pressey's), you see what happens to the distribution. Keion Bell, who was perfectly solid -- 14 points on six shots is awesome, and he at least had a 1.00 BCI (one assist, two steals, three turnovers), which was better than much of the team -- was not "28 AdjGS points" solid, but somebody had to receive credit for the fact that Mizzou somehow managed to score 52 points, and the fact that Bell, Criswell and Jankovic were simply on the positive side of the ledger, they got a lot of points.
• But yeah ... Stefan Jankovic shot 2-for-6 from the field, grabbed no rebounds, had a turnover and two fouls ... and made the Trifecta. Wow.
• Seriously, to those who watched (and can bear to talk about it), how exactly did Mizzou score 52? The only good category in the box score for Missouri was steals. That the Tigers had 11 of them was pretty good.

Three Keys Revisited

From Thursday's preview.

Strength down low

Patric Young is excellent (and healthy) on the interior; he is one of four Gators averaging at least 11 points per game, and he's a solid shot blocker. But of Florida's three primary bigs, he's the only healthy one. Murphy is limited with a rib injury, and Yeguete might or might not play. With Prather out, one should probably expect quite a bit of four-guard play from Florida, which could give the Gators plenty of speed around the perimeter but could lead to an advantage on the inside if Alex Oriakhi is playing well and Mizzou is getting anything from players like Tony Criswell and Stefan Jankovic.

Actually, let's put it another way: If Mizzou is going to win this game, the Tigers have to create an advantage on the inside. It's hard to do without Laurence Bowers (who, at this time, is still a question mark), but it isn't impossible. And it is an absolute necessity.

Mizzou was minus-4 in terms of expected offensive rebounds, blocked one shot (Florida blocked seven) and shot a dreadful 40 percent on 2-pointers. There was, uh, no strength down low.

Brown & Ross

It is quickly becoming the key to Mizzou games. If Jabari Brown and Earnest Ross can make at least 40-50% of their shots from the field, Mizzou can hang with just about anybody. They made 25% against Ole Miss, however, and Mizzou was lucky to stay within 20 points. If these two are making their jumpers, Phil Pressey has some lovely drive-and-dish options and can quickly start pulling a defense's strings. But if they aren't, then Pressey starts taking more shots from long range, and Ross starts forcing the issue (rarely a good thing), and ... bad things happen. There will likely be a hand in the shooter's face on most jumpers against this Florida team; but Mizzou will have to make those jumpers regardless.

Granted, Ross barely played, but the pretty clear trend continued. Brown and Ross combined to shoot 26 percent, and Mizzou's offense was awful.

Mizzou has played seven "real" games since Jabari Brown became eligible. The Tigers are 1-2 (with two bad losses and a narrow home win over Bucknell) when Brown and Ross shoot under 30 percent and 3-1 (with a win over Illinois and two bad opponents and a narrow road loss to UCLA) when they shoot over 40 percent. They don't have to be good, but they do have to be better than awful.

Ball control

Despite a terribly slow pace, Florida is forcing nearly 15 turnovers per game. As we've discussed a few times this season, Mizzou is not a team that is going to create a ball-handling advantage in most games, but in each of the Tigers' three losses, they were absolutely devastated in this category. That simply can't happen if Mizzou is to beat a Top 10 team on the road, even one that is rather dinged up.

The pace was actually rather brisk in this one, but despite double-digit steals, Mizzou still got completely smoked in the ball control game. In every facet of the game, actually.

Summary

That's all I've got. Feel free to add thoughts below, but it's already time to move on to the South Carolina game. Thank goodness for that, I guess. I don't want to be too hard on this team since I didn't see the game, but ... wow, was this about as awful a box score as I've seen in a while. That it was awful in a "Florida is a ridiculously good team that played ridiculously well" way is forgivable. But the rebounding stats, and the fact that the Tigers couldn't win a single aspect of the game (other than FT%, I guess), is not nearly as forgivable. Injuries and the Mike Dixon saga have crushed this team's depth, but ... okay, fine, let's just move on. Whip South Carolina, and everybody will feel better.

---

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.

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 an offensively limited center, 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.