Study Hall: Kentucky 69, Missouri 53

Your Trifecta: Clark-Shamburger-Rosburg

Your Season Trifecta: J3 26 points, Shamburger 25, Clark 21, Teki 16, Wright eight, Isabell six, Gant six, Allen five, Rosburg three, Post four. By class: sophomores 45, freshmen 37, seniors 23, juniors three.

Missouri still doesn't have enough offense to mount a challenge in a game like this, but for the third or fourth time this season, I'll say that last night we caught a lot of glimpses of what the next good Missouri team will look like. A team with all sorts of defensive intensity and offensive patience playing in front of an engaged, fun crowd? Yeah, I'll take that ... though maybe with a little less "patience"...

Kentucky 69, Missouri 53

• In comparing this game to the game in Lexington, we see that the rebounding battle didn't change very much (UK was plus-4.8 in terms of expected rebounds in Lexington and plus-4.5 last night), but the ball-handling shifted a good amount (UK was plus-0.37 in BCI in Lexington, Mizzou was plus-0.33 last night), and the shooting battle was infinitely closer: UK was plus-26.5% in Lexington, plus-6.0% last night. Yes, Johnathan Williams III not going 1-for-13 had a pretty large role to play in that, but UK's percentages dropped a good amount, too.
  
  
• UK was still able to win easily, however, because of a rebounding edge we knew to expect and because of the free throw line. The bigger, stronger, more physical team is going to get to the line more, and Kentucky shot 17 more free throws than Mizzou, making seven more freebies than Mizzou even attempted.
  
  
• Oh, and ... 54 fouls, 57 free throws. In a game that did not come down to the wire. A foul was called every 44 seconds. So, so gross. Teki Gill-Caesar and Keanau Post each fouled out in a combined 21 minutes of action. Karl-Anthony Towns and Marcus Lee for Kentucky each fouled out in a combined 31 minutes. There were fifteen fouls called in the first five minutes of the second half, including an almost always ridiculous double-technical. FIFTEEN. Get your s*** together, college basketball.
  
  This was an intense, occasionally fun game. That's a remarkable accomplishment considering the complete and total lack of flow.

Mizzou Player Stats

(Definitions at the bottom of the post.)

• It's a shame that Clark and Shamburger don't have another year to play together. They've been one hell of a combo at times, and they kept Mizzou in this game for quite a while with eight assists, seven steals, and 24 points on 18 FG attempts (mostly from Clark). I would say Wes bounced back pretty well after Saturday, huh?
  
  
• Well hello there, Ryan Rosburg. 29 minutes and five points in the first seven games of 2015, 25 and eight last night. Feel free to stay awhile!
  
  
• Kim Anderson badly needs a big man in this recruiting class. For obvious reasons, he just doesn't trust Jakeenan Gant and D'Angelo Allen to play too many minutes (a combined 15 last night) against teams with good size/athleticism. And if the SEC has one thing, it's size/athleticism. An offseason in the weight room will help both of them, and both have plenty of potential, but neither are centers. Rosburg's the only one on the roster for next year so far.
  
  
• I thought J3's stat line was going to look better than this, honestly. It felt like he had more than a 10 & 5 going, thought that might have simply been because he was able to stay on the court for more than 14 seconds without getting whistled for a foul.
  
  
• I actually didn't realize how bad Isabell's stat line was going to look, either. When Mizzou was holding steady in the middle of the first half, he was putting in some solid minutes. But instead, he was just part of a dismal showing from the freshmen. Allen, Wright, Isabell, and Gill-Caesar combined for two points, seven rebounds, two assists, eight turnovers, 13 fouls, and minus-19.3 Adj. GS points in 43 minutes. And Gant, who had a decent night, ended up on SportsCenter for getting his pocket picked. You evidently need experience to go up against Kentucky's inexperienced blue-chippers.

Summary

Over the last 10 games, Mizzou is 2-8 with one lovely win (LSU), four gut-wrenching losses, and, by my count, four moral victories (Illinois, OSU, Arkansas, Kentucky). This was a strong, solid, hold-your-head-up-high performance. It was also another loss, of course.

If Kim Anderson can keep morale up over these next few games, that's one hell of a gold star for him. A win over a better-than-expected Ole Miss team on Saturday would be lovely in that regard, but we'll see. There aren't going to be too many more wins this year, but again, we know what the next good Missouri team is going to look like. Just keep showing more and more flashes of it.

But seriously, get your s*** together, college basketball.

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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.

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.