Well, that game didn’t make a lot of sense.

The game started in a very brutal fashion. In fact, I’m pretty sure many of us were hitting the eject button. At least by reading the comments on the Game Thread and some mentions on twitter, things weren’t going very well.

For about 14 minutes to start the game, Mizzou played defense like their lives depended on it. At the 6 minute mark they led 18-11. They went into the locker room at halftime down 29-18. The Mustangs scored 8 points in the final minute, and with the way Mizzou has offense’d recently, things felt over.

But a funny thing happened.

Missouri fought and scrapped and somehow got back in the game. They went small, made some big 3s and sent the game into Overtime. And in Overtime they won.

Team Stats

• Considering Missouri scored 18 first half points: it’s a damn miracle they ended up over a point per possession. Missouri scored 44 points in the second half, 18 points in the overtime, and looked like they had a competent plan in spreading the floor and playing smaller.
• I’m not sure making 35.4% of your 2FG and 42.9% from 3FG is a sustainable model for this team over the course of 40 minutes: but if it means they go into and win every game in Overtime, then ok.
• Imagine losing 3 of the 4 Four Factors and winning: because in the last category, Offensive Rebounding, it was dominant. The Effective Field Goal Percentages were close enough, and the Turnovers were close, The Free Throw attempts leaned heavily towards SMU, but they were only +1 in makes. But Missouri was +8.5 in expected rebounds and rebounded 40% of their misses. That covers a lot of sins.

Player Stats

Your Trifecta: Ronnie DeGray III, Kobe Brown, DaJuan Gordon

On the season: Kobe Brown 8, Ronnie DeGray III 7, Javon Pickett 3, Jarron Coleman 2, DaJuan Gordon 2, Jordan Wilmore 1

Kobe Brown continued his streak of two games being hugely impactful. We talked last game about Brown’s usage rates (still at about 26%) and his efficiency rating (on the year about 114), but one thing that’s drastically helped Brown this season is he hasn’t settled for jumpers. He’s attacked the rim. Before last night Brown had only attempted 3 3FGAs, but he was feeling pretty good in the Florida sun and attempted twice that in one game. And his 3 in overtime, to put Missouri up 71-68, might’ve been the most deciding shot of the game.

But the biggest key to the game was Ronnie DeGray III. When Jordan Wilmore was on the floor in the first half, his presence (and the refs’ reluctance to blow the whistle) led to some herculean efforts defensively. But Wilmore was a bit of a black hole offensively as he went 0-6. DeGray was awesome in the second half. As evidenced by his 179 ORtg for the game.

It was also nice to see Quaye (DaJuan) Gordon break out. Not only was he making his impact on the defensive end, but we finally got to see the kind of effort and intensity Gordon plays with when attacking the rim. If only he could shoot.

This game came down to a few things. A big one was SMU had Kedric Davis, and he was awesome. But he also didn’t have enough help from the rest of the roster. The only other double digit scorer was Marcus Weathers, and that was through 7 free throw makes. Missouri made Davis work for his points, and did a good job limiting the rest of the roster.

Meanwhile, Kobe Brown had his best game, Ronnie DeGray was terrific, and even though they turned the ball over (A TON) they attacked the glass like crazy. SMU hasn’t been a very good rebounding team to date, and Missouri took advantage.

I’m not sure how sustainable the model is to rely on the level of shooting they got, but one thing became a little more clear: going small worked.

I think we’ve all been moderately interested to see what would become of Jordan Wilmore. But mostly we’ve been interested to see how terrifying a Missouri defense could be if they were switching 1-5. Five players played more than 34 minutes (roughly 75% of the available minutes in an overtime game), and those five were Amari Davis, Jarron Coleman, DaJuan Gordon, Kobe Brown, and Ronnie DeGray. With those five on the floor, Missouri was able to score the ball.

They need to develop some depth, but this five looks like the best five. You can go from there. Two of those players (Brown & DeGray) had a Floor rate higher than 40%, Gordon was at 39%, Davis was at 33% (not great but there were promising signs), and Coleman was at 23%. He was awful shooting the ball, but he also had 7 assists. I think you wanna see Javon Pickett back in the role he’s more accustomed to as a bench guy supplying energy. Maybe you can get some more from Keita, a little less from Wilmore, and enough cohesion to see an offense which can make this team at least a little bit of a threat.

Anyway. Tonight should be a lot tougher. Florida State doesn’t have a Kedric Davis, but as Josh’s preview will tell you they’re plenty deep and there are a lot of options. Coming down to Jacksonville, you were hoping for a split. They won the first one, and anything else is a bonus.

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True Shooting Percentage (TS%): Quite simply, this calculates a player’s shooting percentage while taking into account 2FG%, 3FG%, and FT%. The formula is Total Points / 2 * (FGA + (0.475+FTA)). The 0.475 is a Free Throw modifier. KenPomeroy and other College Basketball sites typically use 0.475, while the NBA typically uses 0.44. That’s basically what TS% is. A measure of scoring efficiency based on the number of points scored over the number of possessions in which they attempted to score, more here.

Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%): This is similar to TS%, but takes 3-point shooting more into account. The formula is FGM + (0.5 * 3PM) / FGA

So think of TS% as scoring efficiency, and eFG% as shooting efficiency, more here.

Expected Offensive Rebounds: Measured based upon the average rebounds a college basketball team gets on both the defensive and offensive end. This takes the overall number of missed shots (or shots available to be rebounded) and divides them by the number of offensive rebounds and compares them with the statistical average.

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.

Offensive Rating (ORtg): Similar to Adjusted game score, but this looks at how many points per possession a player would score if they were averaged over 100 possessions.

Usage%: This “estimates the % of team possessions a player consumes while on the floor” (via sports-reference.com/cbb). 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 sports-reference.com/cbb: Floor % answers the question, “When a Player 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.