Better perimeter shooting could have meant an upset for Missouri at Alabama

Your Trifecta: Puryear-Rosburg-Isabell. That's ... unique.

Your Season Totals: Your Season Totals: Puryear 28, Phillips 22, Clark 18, Wright 17, Walton 12, Gant 12, Isabell 10, VanLeer 7, Woods 5, Rosburg 5, Allen 2. Freshmen 69, sophomores 41, juniors 23, seniors 5.

Alabama 80, Missouri 71

• If you'd have told me that Alabama 'only' outrebounded Missouri by five (despite the absence of Jakeenan Gant, Russell Woods, and D'Angelo Allen), and that Kevin Puryear and Ryan Rosburg were going to erupt for 39 points and 13 rebounds, and ... I might have actually thought Mizzou would pull the upset here.
• Alabama's a pretty bad ball-handling team, and while the Crimson Tide take a ton of 3-pointers, they don't actually make many. And sure enough, in this game, Bama shot just 32% from 3-point range and committed 13 turnovers with only four steals. Even with nine blocked shots, the Tide were ripe for an upset here.
• Unfortunately, despite its guard-heavy nature, Missouri isn't a very good ball-handling team either. The Tigers managed to only break even in the ball-handling (BCI) department, and while Puryear made two of three 3-pointers, the rest of the team shot 1-for-13. Mizzou somewhat negated its most obvious weakness in this game but didn't have nearly enough strengths.
• A 10-4 Mizzou run over the final two minutes made this game look closer than it was for most of the second half, but this was yet another game defined by opponent runs. The Tigers were competitive for much of the way, but blink, and they're down 15. Bama went on runs of 12-4 (in two minutes), 13-2 (in five), and 10-0 (in two), and that was that. Those nine minutes: Bama 35-6. The other 31: Mizzou 65, Bama 45. Mizzou is just swimming upstream in every game. The Tigers make decent headway, and then any minor glitch sends them a mile backwards.

Mizzou Player Stats

(Definitions at the bottom of the post.)

• Only two Tigers had a defensive rebounding rate better than 13%: Puryear (16%) ... and Wolf (29%). He missed his one shot and was basically foul fodder for the most part, but he has a good reputation as a shooter, and "makes 3s and grabs defensive rebounds" is certainly an intriguing combination of traits to keep in mind moving forward.
• Clark, Wright, and Phillips: 18 points, 4-for-11 on 2-pointers, 0-for-8 on 3s. Go 6-for-11 and 2-for-8, and that might give Mizzou the upset.
• It's a shame that it's taken this long, I guess, but with his career winding down, Missouri has finally figured out ways to get Ryan Rosburg involved in the offense. His limitations are still obvious, but he's doing a little bit of damage.
• Basically, one of my only goals for the rest of this season is to see a few more games like this out of Kevin Puryear. He's obviously got a pretty old-school game, but he's got a lot of tricks up his sleeve, and anytime he shows some of those tricks against conference foes, that gives me a glint of hope for what this Missouri team could be a couple of years from now.

Summary

I'm pretty forgiving about this one, and for obvious reasons. Playing without Woods, Gant, and Allen meant Missouri went from being a small team to a tiny one, and Cullen VanLeer and Adam Wolf had to combine for 36 minutes, frequently on the interior. That Mizzou was able to stay within nine, even if it was because of a garbage-time run, was fine. And the Tigers were even rewarded for their effort by moving up nine spots in the Pomeroy rankings.

Next up is a trip to Vanderbilt, then a Saturday visit from the most beatable team remaining on the schedule: Tennessee. Here's to hoping the fight we saw yesterday is the fight we'll continue to see. (Then again, fight hasn't really been the issue with this team...)

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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.