I had a nice little weekend planned. It was my wife’s birthday on Saturday, so for the first time in a long time I wasn’t going to let a Mizzou sporting event dominate my Saturday. Admittedly I did check my phone a few times to see the score. My reactions were one of pleasant surprise and then one of my expectations being met.

At this point we’ve figured out this team and it’s limitations. So a lot of games will result in being ugly offensively. But if Mizzou can make a few outside shots, get some transition opportunities, and manufacture a few points here and there, they’ll make the game competitive.

But things can get sideways quickly because they don’t have consistent ball handling.

Conversely, Texas A&M is that team that makes everything ugly. They’re a max effort kind of team, but they don’t offense well, so they’re an easy team to jump out on or catch up to. They play a lot of close games, but since they’re well coached they’re able to win a lot of those close games. The last few years they’ve just been that atrocious on offense, where none of that mattered. This season though they’re just like regular bad on offense, and not like historically bad. So they win those games.

Team Stats

• After being obliterated in every column last game: Mizzou was actually the leader in 2FG%, 3FG%, TS%, eFG%, they had more assists, but they also had more turnovers. So the key stat here for me is the difference between Mizzou and A&M’s PPP/PPS. Mizzou was -0.32 and A&M was -0.13. In a close game, A&M took 10 more shots. Realistically with Missouri’s offensive issues that’s a stat they need to be equal on at least, and well ahead at best.
• So while turnovers were a big part of it: another issue was the offensive rebounds. A&M was +7 in the ORB category, and +2.9 in expected rebounds.

A&M had 11 steals, but after watching the game not many of those were straight takeaways. A lot of those steals were poor decisions by Missouri ball handlers trying to dribble through traffic.

Player Stats

Your Trifecta: Jarron Coleman, Trevon Brazile, Javon Pickett

On the season: Kobe Brown 26, Amari Davis 15, Jarron Coleman 14, Ronnie DeGray III 12, Javon Pickett 12, Trevon Brazile 8, DaJuan Gordon 5, Sean Durugordon 2, Yaya Keita 1, Jordan Wilmore 1

The takeaway of watching that game and seeing Boogie at the top of the trifecta should lead you to believe that nobody really played all that well. Nobody was bad, but nobody was really good either. Coleman was 4-8 from the floor, 4-4 from the FT line and had 3 assists but also had 3 turnovers.

Missing here really was Kobe Brown, who after scorching Alabama for 30 points has only had 13 points total the last two games. In MIzzou’s last 7 games they’re 2-5. Kobe Brown scored 28.5 points in the wins, and 7.4 ppg in the losses. Obviously the other four losses were more lopsided than yesterday, but it proves the point that Brown is important to the Mizzou attack, and when he’s able to get loose he greatly improves their chances of winning.

Continuing on the importance of Brown, Kobe was at 25% usage (which is his rate on the year) and he wasn't one of the guys with a floor rate above 40%.

You got a solid day from Javon Pickett, surprise positive minutes from Yaya Keita, and some reasonably good minutes from Ronnie DeGray. He also shortened the bench and went solely with 7 players, plus a spot appearance from Kaleb Brown. No Durugordon, no Brookshire, no Wilmore. No attempts to get looks for some young guys and the big guy, and it didn’t matter.

After the early lead, Mizzou was able to stay in front for most of the game with a pretty basic game plan. They got out and ran in transition, and tried to attack the rim. It mostly worked. A&M was really spotty in transition defense, and it allowed Mizzou to get some easy buckets.

The problem was in the half court, Mizzou’s offense is so predictable that A&M could set its defense by predicting future switches. Often lining up its forwards on Mizzou’s guards so screens were ineffective and caused stagnation. Stagnant offense, turnovers, no real on the ball playmaker. Stop me if you’ve heard this mix cause a loss before?

The good news is Mizzou can get back quickly with a game tomorrow. The bad news is it’s a road game in a place they’ve struggled to win games recently: Ole Miss.

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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.