If trips to Fayetteville elicit images of previous horror films, well, that shouldn’t be surprising. Since losing by 52 in 1993, Mizzou has made 14 trips to the WalMart capital of the world (technically Bentonville and Fayetteville aren’t the same place but it’s all basically the same metro area, right?) and only won twice. Once last year, and then in 2014. Most of those losses got ugly, nothing quite as ugly as the 52 point beatdown to open Bud Walton Arena. But one thing to keep in mind here, that was the best Arkansas team in history and Missouri would later add a JUCO All-American to their roster and go on an undefeated Big 8 run.

That was also the 2nd game of the season for the Tigers, and last night’s 44 point loss was the 15th. Roughly halfway. And Paul O’Linney isn’t sitting in a dorm on campus waiting to give Cuonzo the help he needs.

Team Stats

• Missouri won one statistical category last night: Free Throw shooting percentage. Unfortunately, Arkansas won the FTA/FGA category so shooting a high percentage doesn’t help when the other team makes more than you shoot.
• The 0.59 ppp is Mizzou’s worst offensive performance since...: had to look it up, but it was the road loss to Kentucky in 2015. That was 86-37, so really just fewer free throws. So this was a historically poor performance offensively.
• Believe it or not, Missouri has had far worst turnover rates, just not this year: There were three games in the 2018-19 season with TO rates higher than that. You know, the other season they tried to play without a point guard.

It’s not worth spending a lot of time here. When you lose the way Missouri lost, every category is going to look bad, and this team has kinda shown its margin for error is low. Once they got down early it was over. They made three FGs in the first half, and were down 34 points at halftime. That’s really pretty hard to do.

Player Stats

Your Trifecta: Javon Pickett, Jarron Coleman, Trevon Brazile

On the season: Kobe Brown 26, Amari Davis 15, Ronnie DeGray III 12, Javon Pickett 11, Jarron Coleman 10, Trevon Brazile 6, DaJuan Gordon 5, Sean Durugordon 2, Yaya Keita 1, Jordan Wilmore 1

I’m not sure anyone deserves trifecta points for this game. Especially Javon Pickett. Javon is capable of being a catalyst for this team, but he was -40. He had no field goals in the first half including a couple missed layups, he lands himself in the trifecta by basically helping them tread water once the lead was extended to 30+ points. Part of that is how the calculations work, and when the positives are so few, and the negatives are so great, if you do ANY thing positive it gets weighted heavily.

I thought our guy Trevon Brazile had another solid performance. He’s not super productive because he’s not a guy who can hunt his own shots yet, or break anyone down off the dribble. His shooting pocket is still a touch low with a slow load time, but the release is clean. He just needs some help on the ball so he can help more off the ball. But that chase down block on Jaylin Williams was fun.

Welcome back, Amari Davis, with a 5% floor rate. And Anton Brookshire, with his 17% floor rate. Dave Matter offered up Kaleb Brown’s performance against Alabama as a reason for him to possibly see more minutes... and that didn’t go well. A 0% floor rate and a 60% turnover rate.

When this team played well, they’re decent. When they play bad, it’s sooooooo so so so bad. So far they’ve lost 8 games and only one of those losses were within single digits. Six of those losses were by 20 or more, and four of them by 30 or more.

I’ve said many times what I thought this team could or could not be. This season in particular. They could be a team with a lot of losses, as long as those losses could be explained as bumps in the road, and as long as those bumps got smoothed out as the season went along. But we’re 15 games in and they’ve only looked competent in two of the last six games. With three of those games being massive losses to big regional rivals.

The hope for the season and any future for this coaching staff in particular was a foundation being set by a group of young talent. But Anton Brookshire played 6 minutes, Sean Durugordon played 6 minutes, and neither really look like they’re getting better as the season goes on. Meanwhile 32 minutes went to the team’s lone senior, 33 minutes to a junior, 29 minutes to another junior, and 22 minutes to another junior.

Progress is never linear, but this has been a downward trend all season. And going back to last February things have just been sticky for Cuonzo and his program. Missouri started this season inside the top 100 in KenPom and has slid all the way down to 171. There have been moments where they’ve looked pretty good, but it’s been offensive. They get a few threes to fall and suddenly things look competent. But the defense has been porous and doesn’t appear to be improving. Even against Alabama they gave up 1.23 points per possession.

This just doesn’t feel like the trajectory which keeps the coach around for another year.

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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.