Study Hall: South Carolina 65, Missouri 60

Your Trifecta: J3-Allen-Post.

Your Season Trifecta: J3 32 points, Shamburger 29, Clark 24, Teki 16, Post 11, Wright eight, Allen seven, Gant seven, Isabell six, Rosburg four. By class: sophomores 53, freshmen 42, seniors 39, juniors four.

South Carolina 65, Missouri 60

• As we've said so many times this year, the problem for this team changes from game to game. Mizzou shot reasonably well -- the Tigers were awful on 2-pointers but offset it by going 7-for-14 on 3-pointers -- and ended up averaging nearly 1.0 points per possession against one of the best defensive teams in the conference. Plus, they played defense that was infinitely more feisty than it was against A&M. (Not coincidentally, South Carolina is a much worse offensive team than A&M.) But...
  
  
• ...they got mauled on the glass (not surprising against a Frank Martin team) and in the ball control battle (a bit surprising).
  
  
• In terms of Four Factors season averages, Mizzou now ranks better than 200th in exactly one: eFG% defense (164th). The Tigers are 225th in Off. TO%, 232nd in OR%, 275th in eFG% offense, 278th in Def. TO%, 293rd in Off. FTA/FGA, 300th in DR%, and 317th in Def. FTA/FGA. That's brutal. But experiencing these stats in real time, we know that in any given game, a couple of them have been relative strengths and a couple have been abysmal. I don't know if "sporadically awful" is better or worse than "consistently bad" when it comes to fixing things in the future, but it's been interesting to experience.

Mizzou Player Stats

(Definitions at the bottom of the post.)

• Deuce Bello was basically one foul away from finishing in the Trifecta for the first time this year. He turned into a de facto point guard and wasn't particularly awful at it. That's good because with Wes Clark out, we'll be seeing a lot more of him in this role, especially if Tramaine Isabell continues to sit.
  
  
• Poor Keith Shamburger was trying way too hard for a bit after Clark's injury and ended up having himself a strange game: 2-for-4 on 3-pointers, 3-for-3 from the line, five assists, a couple of defensive rebounds ... and 2-for-10 on 2-pointers with eight (!) turnovers.
  
  
• HELLO, D'ANGELO ALLEN'S JUMP SHOT. WE MISSED YOU. PLEASE STICK AROUND A WHILE.
  
  
• I'm not sure I've ever seen a player more in need of 10-15 pounds of muscle than Jakeenan Gant. Despite turnovers, we've caught sustained glimpses of an exciting offensive skill set -- last two games: 17 points (7-9 2PT, 3-3 FT), 3 offensive rebounds -- but he also has two defensive rebounds in the last seven games. Even if we think of him more as SF than PF (and we probably can't do that), that's a ridiculously awful defensive rebound rate. In fact, for the season, his DR% (6.8%) is worse than Tramaine Isabell's (7.3%), worse than Keith Shamburger's (9.2%), and way worse than Wes Clark's (11.0%). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's the major reason why he's only seen 33 minutes in the last two games even while he began to explode offensively.
  
  
• The most telling moment of the game for me came after Clark's injury. With three or four minutes left and Mizzou down 5, J3 got the ball at the free throw line and faked a pass to the wing. His defender didn't even pretend to react to the fake. "Yeah, go ahead and pass it. I'm fine with that." Granted, this almost killed South Carolina because Mizzou's 3s were actually falling for once, but I figured that was pretty indicative of the current state of Mizzou's offense. Opponents focus on stopping Williams and just kind of assume everything will work out pretty well. And it usually does.
  
  
• Ryan Rosburg is now 8-for-34 from the free throw line this year. EIGHT FOR THIRTY-FOUR. That's an awful 3-point percentage. I'm not sure I've ever seen a case of the yips like this before. He shot 57% as a freshman, 57% as a sophomore ... and is currently at 24% this year. He would have to make 26 free throws in a row to get to 57%. (And Ryan, if you're thinking about actually making 26 in a row, go ahead and save them for next year, okay? Because that's the way it works, right?)

Summary

If we're just stocking up on encouraging moments and performances to give ourselves hope in the offseason, Jakeenan Gant really has had a nice couple of offensive games, J3 managed to do some decent things despite seeing a lot of attention from a really good defensive team, Deuce Bello looked competent in a point guard type of role, and D'Angelo Allen discovered his jumper again (it's always the last place you look). And perhaps most encouraging of all, after a brief funk following Wes Clark's gross injury, the team rallied and fought like crazy down the stretch. It didn't work out, of course, but in the season's seven remaining games (plus the conference tournament), simple fight and passion could be the most important traits to see. This team hasn't given up on the season, even if the season long since gave up on this team.

There are plenty of discouraging things, too, when you lose a game to a team that was 2-8 in conference play, but we already know what those were. We're in full-on "hoarding the good" mode now, and there was some good to be seen.

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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.