Mizzou has a good offense, you guys!

At least against bad opponents. So far this season, Southern Indiana is the only opponent with an Adjusted Defense rating under 200. We knew going into the season how weak the opening non-conference slate was, but even that shouldn’t take away your good vibes on the season so far. Mostly because it’s been a minute since we’ve seen good offense from Mizzou basketball teams.

We understood and could appreciate what Cuonzo Martin and his teams were trying to do, in most cases. He did modernize and ran more NBA-level offense, but he never recruited guys who were great at executing offense. Even as good as Dru Smith was, or Kassius Robertson, offense for the last 5 years could be tough at times (technically the MU offense in 2017-18 had a better AdjustedO, just to be completely up front here). Before that, the Kim Anderson era was forgettable, and they were bad on both ends. In Frank Haith’s last year, the offense was good but it hinged on two players being great. It’s really been since the 2012-13 season where you had a team that could score like this one can.

What makes this team fun is we’ve seen great offense from just about everyone on the roster except the one guy who we expected to be the best offensively. And while Isiaih Mosley hasn’t been bad, everyone else has been terrific. At least in stretches.

But we’re four games in, and we know this team can find ways to score the basketball. And they SCORED the basketball against SIUE last night.

Team Stats

• Pace: The way this teams plays fast, even when they’re controlling the ball, is what makes them so fun to watch. 80 possessions, something Mizzou has seen just 5 times since Mike Anderson left. So far at least, it seems like Mizzou is committed to playing fast.
• I’m convinced the Free Throw thing is going to be a bit now: And if there was ever a night to make it a bit it would be when you foul your opponent enough to hit the 60% FTA / FGA mark. It’s honestly funny, especially when Mizzou shot just 13 free throws in a night when they scored 105.
• BALL CONTROL INDEXXXXXXXXX: According to last night’s broadcast, Mizzou is the only team (maybe it was power conference team) to have 20+ assists in each game so far this season. Couple a bunch of assists, a lotta steals, and not a ton of turnovers and you have a wonderful BCI number.

Last night though, none of this really mattered. Missouri was a much better basketball team and they outclassed SIUE at every turn. The defense was better, and they forced a lot of sloppiness from the Cougars. The only real category where SIUE beat the Tigers was on the glass, and if you were paying attention, Mizzou spent a lot of time with 5 guard lineups which left them vulnerable on the glass. Even to a team like SIUE.

Player Stats

Your Trifecta: D’Moi Hodge, Sean East II, Tre Gomillion

On the season: Kobe Brown 6, Noah Carter 5, D’Moi Hodge 4, Nick Honor 3, Tre Gomillion 3, Sean East II 3

I kinda figured we would get some wonky GameScore numbers after D’Moi Hodge set fire to the box score. So we’re going to talk about Hodge’s game since he’s the guy who was the main difference maker last night. He did everything. Hodge is one of the best defensive catalysts, and when the defense turned to offense, Hodge was shot out of a cannon. Part of what makes Hodge a fun player is his commitment to defending, his quick hands, and his full throttle approach to running the floor.

It’s hard to pick out individuals here when everyone did well (well, aside from the end of the bench guys who struggled a bit). But I do want to isolate Sean East II. East has been okay so far, but against SIUE he was terrific. He got to the rim, he facilitated the ball, and a 144.2 ORtg on 9 shots and five assists with just 2 turnovers is the kind of line you’d like to see replicated.

Yeah, I joked on twitter that Deandre Gholston basically checked out on the game when he fouled out. Isiaih Mosley played a really pretty good game, he didn’t shoot the ball great and he and Aidan Shaw were the only guys who didn’t light the SIUE defense on fire when they were on the floor. I honestly don’t remember seeing that much green on the Floor Rate. Again, everyone has their moments.

For that reason, I don’t want to spend too much more time here. SIUE was clearly overmatched. The offense got whatever it wanted, they turned the Cougars over a bunch and this was never really a close game.

Keep in mind here, the competition doesn’t get a whole lot better over the next few weeks. Southern Indiana (202), Penn (169), Lindenwood (351), and SIUE (277) are down, and next up is Mississippi Valley State (362), Coastal Carolina (177), and Houston Baptist Christian (321) are all up next before Mizzou goes on the road to Wichita State, who is 98th in KenPom with a home loss to Alcorn State.

Hopefully by the next Study Hall I’ll have finished the updates on the % box.

But overall this game was a weird one. Yes, SIUE was completely overmatched. Mizzou scored the ball at will. It’s still hard not to think about how poor they are rebounding the ball, and whether or not the pressing and trapping will work against teams with better size and more talent.

This is a fun team. Enjoy the fact they can score it. But before we get ahead of ourselves with how good they are, let’s watch them against some teams with a pulse first. That might be a while. Until then, let’s keep building it up.

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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.