Study Hall: Georgia 68, Missouri 44

Your Trifecta: Gant-Wright-Shamburger.

Your Season Trifecta: J3 37 points, Shamburger 36, Clark 24, Teki 18, Post 12, Wright 13, Gant 13, Allen nine, Isabell seven, Rosburg five. By class: sophomores 61, freshmen 60, seniors 48, juniors five.

Since it's my first time doing Study Hall, I thought about just going back and copying the first few lines of one of the other bad games from this season to see if anyone noticed. At this stage, after a performance like that, I would completely understand if you didn't watch any of the second half. MIzzou's margin of error is so thin, and going against a clear top 40 team, and one that might be ranked higher if not for a series of untimely injuries, the margin of error is razor thin. So with a razor thin margin of error the Tigers went out and shot 25.8% from the floor in the first half. Georgia played like the good version of the Bulldogs, and the rest is what you saw on television. Ugly for Mizzou fans.

I think after the Florida loss there was a segment of the fan base that wanted to make that game something it wasn't. They wanted it to be a turning point, a signal of this team turning the page, or a sign of things to come. And truth be told, it might be. That's all unwritten, but as has been stated many times in Study Hall's by Bill, and at RockMNation in general, that this team and this season is much father away and it more likely to issue a performance like this one than they are a performance like they had on Tuesday night.

Georgia 68, Missouri 44

• 0.71 PPP is dreadful.
• Georgia actually ended up below their season mark on eFG% and still won by 22. I felt like Mizzou did a good job of making Georgia take the shots Mizzou wanted them to take, just far to often they went in early. And even then, there were several opportunities for the Tigers to stay in the game early to gain some confidence and just couldn't find the basket. At one point when it was 7-3 Namon Wright had an open layup and missed, Johnathan Williams III had an easy tip in and missed, and the Tigers still had one more possession after that and couldn't get the ball in the hole.
• I think an offseason spent in the weight room will do a lot of good for this team when it comes to the obnoxious BCI they seem to find a way of putting up. But when the other team basically triples you in that category, yeah... you're not winning that game.
• I'm just not going to talk about how Mizzou got crushed on the glass. Again.
• Okay, I am going to talk about the glass, but in a different way. I said this on twitter:
  

  Georgia is just so much stronger physically. They move Mizzou off of spots defensively, claim the spots they want offensively.

  — Sam Snelling (@SamSnellingRMN) February 28, 2015

  
  Physical strength is important. Missouri doesn't get the spots they want on offense, and can't prevent the other team from getting to theirs. When that happens you tend to take 20 footers instead of 15, and 12 footers instead of 5. Missouri has to get stronger in the offseason.

(Definitions at the bottom of the post.)

• Missouri, at one point this season, was completely counting on JW3, Keith Shamburger and Wes Clark to find offense. Now, one of those guys is out for the year, and the other two look completely out of gas. The two combined to go 5-20 from 2 and 1-8 from 3, and couldn't find a way to get much of anything going. I think Kim Anderson realized that and pulled both between 13 minutes and 10 minutes to go in the game. The fact that both played as they did and still managed to show a positive game score shows how rough this game was for the team.
• On the same topic of JW3, there seems to be opinions by some that he isn't a very good player or that he lacks a certain skill level or even intelligence on the court. This couldn't be further from the truth and I think its a bit reactionary to put that on him. He's an intelligent and gifted sophomore who, due to the circumstances of the roster, is being asked to do a lot more than most others in his position. If he were the second or third option on this team, we'd all be seeing a much different version of him. One that was more efficient, and one that would seemingly show a lot more promise if he weren't thrust in the position he's in.
• Not quite the way I'm sure Jakeenan Gant envisioned his homecoming. He wasn't very good in the first half, and snuck into the top spot in the second half with a few gimmes late. Overall the team was so bad that just a few made baskets allowed a guy to take the top spot.
• Considering that he didn't play for the first 27 minutes of the game, I thought Isabell came in and competed pretty hard for the most part. He still took a few bad shots, but defended hard and tried to make things happen. Good for him for not letting the first 27 minutes affect his last 13.
• Keanau Post and Ryan Rosburg are basically the same player at this point. Ineffective on offense, costly on defense.
• Namon Wright plays well at times, but a 59% shot rate and a 29% turnover rate. That's 88%, a 0% pass rate is not exactly ideal for a guard.

Summary

So after a quick respite from #TheDarkWinter we're back to how we felt after the Vanderbilt game. Georgia is a good team, they're likely going to the NCAA Tournament and if they had saved themselves from an injury or two they'd probably have at least another win or three. So there wasn't much reason to think that Missouri stood a chance. They've still got chances coming up with Auburn (KenPom: 154) up next on Tuesday in Columbia, then the regular season wraps up at Mississippi State (167). Missouri sits at 200 after the loss to Georgia. There isn't a really big difference between those three teams, other than the other two occasionally make more shots. KenPom projects that the Tigers go 1-1 over that span and finishes 3-15 in the SEC.

So Missouri still has a chance to head into the SEC tournament with a little bit of a better feeling than they've had of late. Maybe the win over Florida will buoy them, the memory of the taste of victory will help them find one more the rest of the way. But the reality is that the sooner this team hits the offseason the sooner they'll be able to lick their wounds and work on the rebuild part of Year Zero. The sooner that happens, the sooner we get to find out who wants in on Year One of the rebuild and who wants out. The pieces are there to at least create a great foundation for the future of Mizzou basketball, they'll just have to get through this offseason in one piece first.

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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.