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Missouri beat Tennessee and raised $50,000. It was a good day at Mizzou Arena.

Consider this your Sunday live thread.

By Bill Connelly
Timothy Tai-USA TODAY Sports

Your Trifecta: Rosburg-Puryear-Wright.

Your Season Totals: Your Season Totals: Puryear 31, Phillips 22, Clark 18, Wright 18, Walton 12, Gant 14, Rosburg 11, Isabell 10, VanLeer 7, Woods 5, Allen 2. Freshmen 72, sophomores 44, juniors 23, seniors 11.

Good day. It was a good day at Mizzou Arena.

Missouri 75, Tennessee 64

Mizzou
 Tennessee
Pace (No. of Possessions) 62.0
Points Per Possession (PPP) 1.21 1.03
Points Per Shot (PPS) 1.70 1.16
2-PT FG% 67.9% 46.4%
3-PT FG% 31.3% 29.6%
FT% 73.3% 58.3%
True Shooting % 65.6% 48.8%
FTA/FGA 68.2% 43.6%
Mizzou Tennessee
Assists 12 8
Steals 3 4
Turnovers 17 5
Ball Control Index (BCI)
(Assists + Steals) / TO 		0.88 2.40
Mizzou Tennessee
Expected Offensive Rebounds 8.3 13.4
Offensive Rebounds 11 11
Difference +2.7 -2.4
  • The best and most frustrating part of this win is that it didn't take anything particularly unrealistic. Nobody went 7-for-9 from 3-point range. Mizzou still committed 17 turnovers. It wasn't randomly perfect, and aside from Missouri shooting 68% on 2-pointers (89% for Ryan Rosburg, 58% for everyone else), this felt mostly sustainable.
  • Even with the 2-pointers, guys were taking shots they could make. Rosburg near the basket, Phillips on the free-throw line pull-up, etc. That both gives you a smidge of hope for the last six games of the season and makes you wonder why we didn't see this more in the previous 24.
  • It helped that Tennessee is one of the worst offensive rebounding teams in the country (335th, actually). Mizzou won the expected rebounds battle by 5.1, which ... doesn't happen. I guess maybe that goes in the "unsustainable" column. But I'll stop there before I undo my own argument.

Mizzou Player Stats

(Definitions at the bottom of the post.)

Player
 AdjGS GmSc/Min Line
Ryan Rosburg 25.2 0.72 35 Min, 21 Pts (8-9 FG, 5-7 FT), 5 Reb, 1 Ast, 1 Stl, 2 Blk, 2 TO, 3 PF
Kevin Puryear 19.4 0.77 25 Min, 17 Pts (6-8 FG, 2-3 3PT, 3-4 FT), 5 Reb (1 Off), 1 Ast, 1 TO, 2 PF
Namon Wright 11.7 0.47 25 Min, 13 Pts (3-7 FG, 2-5 3PT, 5-6 FT), 5 Reb, 2 Ast, 1 Stl, 3 TO, 3 PF
Terrence Phillips 6.1 0.24 26 Min, 5 Pts (2-5 FG, 0-2 3PT, 1-2 FT), 7 Reb (4 Off), 5 Ast, 3 TO, 4 PF
Jakeenan Gant 5.6 0.35 16 Min, 5 Pts (2-3 FG, 1-1 3PT), 6 Reb (1 Off), 1 TO, 2 PF
Wes Clark 2.6 0.12 22 Min, 4 Pts (0-1 FG, 4-4 FT), 5 Reb, 1 Ast, 1 Stl, 3 TO, 4 PF
K.J. Walton 2.0 0.41 5 Min, 3 Pts (1-2 FG, 1-3 FT), 1 Reb (1 Off), 1 PF
Russell Woods 0.4 0.08 5 Min, 0 Pts (0-0 FG), 1 Blk, 1 PF
Tramaine Isabell 0.3 0.01 25 Min, 5 Pts (1-5 FG, 0-2 3PT, 3-4 FT), 1 Reb (1 Off), 2 Ast, 3 TO, 1 PF
Cullen VanLeer -2.5 -0.15 16 Min, 2 Pts (1-4 FG, 0-3 3PT), 1 TO, 1 PF
Player Usage% Floor% Touches/
Poss.		 %Pass %Shoot %Fouled %T/O
Ryan Rosburg 22% 62% 1.9 27% 41% 22% 9%
Kevin Puryear 23% 60% 2.2 33% 45% 16% 6%
Namon Wright 27% 38% 3.2 45% 27% 16% 12%
Terrence Phillips 18% 38% 4.7 76% 13% 4% 8%
Jakeenan Gant 13% 45% 0.8 0% 75% 0% 25%
Wes Clark 14% 30% 1.8 46% 8% 22% 24%
K.J. Walton 36% 37% 2.6 0% 49% 51% 0%
Tramaine Isabell 21% 26% 2.8 52% 22% 12% 13%
Cullen VanLeer 17% 17% 1.0 0% 80% 0% 20%
  • We've heard of guys finishing their careers strong before, but I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like what Ryan Rosburg is doing right now. It's like the ghost of George Mikan visited him in a dream or something.

    First 16 games: 3.7 PPG
    Next 6 games: 6.3 PPG
    Last 3 games: 20.7 PPG

    That's befuddling in all the best possible ways. And everything he's doing is so natural. The guards are getting him the ball in the right places, and he's making one move and putting the ball in the basket. His footwork is clean, his first step is quick ... it all looks right. And then you realize how little we saw of this in the first 3.75 years of his basketball career.

  • With Rosburg suddenly carrying the scoring load (!!!), Kevin Puryear is proving he can play a complementary role really, really well. He might not be ready to be a team's No. 1 scoring option, but he wears the No. 2 role like a glove.

  • Namon Wright made his 13 points count. I can immediately recall all three of his made field goals -- the two early 3-pointers that gave Mizzou Arena a bit of a buzz and the emphatic, cathartic steal and dunk that gave Mizzou an 11-point lead with six minutes left. He was otherwise 0-for-4 from the field, but that's certainly a way to set a tone.

  • Six rebounds in 16 minutes for Jakeenan Gant. He's taken four 3-pointers in his last two games, which would be disconcerting if a) he weren't also doing some work on the glass (which proves he's not just floating around on the perimeter) and b) he hadn't made three of the four. He's apparently feeling it at the moment.

  • I'm still struggling to understand the minutes distribution between KJ Walton and Cullen VanLeer, and I know I'm not alone. For the season, CVL has now played 86 more minutes and has scored 26 fewer points on 22 more field goal attempts while grabbing 11 fewer rebounds, dishing three fewer assists, and nabbing four fewer steals. We know that Walton isn't known as much of an outside shooter, but ... he's made 24 percent of his 3-pointers this year. That's not good, but CVL's only at 29 percent. Walton turns the ball over more but has also gotten to the free throw line 65 times. CVL's 5-for-8.

    I'm sure there's a reason. Maybe VanLeer is much better in practice. Maybe he makes like 50% of his 3s in practice, and it's only a matter of time before those start to fall in games. Maybe Walton is making too many careless mistakes in ball-handling and defense. There's a reason. But I'd love to hear it because I don't see it on the court.

Summary

Good day. Missouri rose from 194th in Pomeroy's ratings to 174th, the highest the Tigers have been since after the Auburn win.

Now do it again. Tennessee was by far the most beatable team left on the schedule, and South Carolina, Tuesday night's home opponent, is flagging a bit -- the Gamecocks are just 4-3 in their last seven games (with a loss to Tennessee) and just lost at home to Kentucky by 27. (Plus, another upcoming home opponent, Texas A&M, has lost four in a row.)

But really, I'm only talking so much about wins. After South Carolina, Mizzou isn't projected to have a better than 24% chance of winning any of the final five games, so even improved play is only going to mean so much. But in these final six games, we're just searching for happy moments and signs of true improvement. Saturday had quite a few of them. Now we want more.

---

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.

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