Mississippi Valley State is a bad basketball team. Let’s just get this out of the way. The only reason anyone is disappointed in the game last night is that MVSU has lost to anyone with a pulse by a lot of points. But one of the benefits of running this heavily data driven Study Hall post over the years is you begin to spot outliers when they’re happening in real time. Thus my last first half tweet last night:

In the first half last night, MVSU guard Terry Collins decided he was going to do something he’d never done at the collegiate level. As one of the more capable players at MVSU, Collins still is only considered a marginally good shooter at times. Last season he shot 30% from deep, but last night he made his first six shots and was on his way to a 22 point first half. Basically, he single-handedly kept the Delta Devils in the game. There were 38 first half possessions, and Collins scored 22 points on 15 shots and just 2 turnovers. Roughly a 129 ORtg when the team as a whole had a 97 ORtg with 43% of those possessions going to one guy who was doing heavy lifting.

Even with that first half performance, Collins’ ORtg on the season is still just 93.3. If he were at his average and hitting on a 0.93 ppp, Mizzou would have had closer to a 10 point advantage than the 3 point advantage they did have.

So while it didn’t feel like the Tigers were giving their best effort, they were mostly on track, save for one guy going ham. I’d also point out that Arecko Gipson made the first three of his career.

All it took for for Mizzou to get the edge was for reality to set in for Collins (he was just 1 of 7 in the second half) and for Isiaih Mosley to catch a small heater.

Team Stats

• Even with a sloppy first half offensively: Mizzou was still murderous in BCI. They share the ball, so the Assist Rate has never been below 24%. They tend to take care of the ball so their TO Rate has been over 20% just once and they are at 16.9% on the season. And their defense is pesky enough that they’ve only had fewer than 10 steals once (against Lindenwood when they caused a 25.8% turnover rate). These are things which will help you stay in and win lots of games as long as you can keep it up against better competition.
• Rebounding isn’t great: even gang rebounding is ineffective against teams where you’re clearly the better team. That’s one area where I’m a little worried about what it’s going to look like when they face a team with size like Illinois or Kentucky.
• But, if you’re going to get crushed on the glass: you have to make up possessions elsewhere. Which is part of the BCI again. Mizzou had 10 more possessions last night. They’re +40 on the season, which is an average of 8 more possessions per game. If you do that each game you can probably get away with being one of the country’s worst defensive rebounding teams. Probably. Maybe. We’re going to see.

Player Stats

Your Trifecta: D’Moi Hodge, Nick Honor, Kobe Brown

On the season: D’Moi Hodge 7, Kobe Brown 7, Nick Honor 5, Noah Carter 5, Tre Gomillion 3, Sean East II 3

I know, you’re very surprised to see that Isiaih Mosley did not make the Trifecta, right? Well, that’s what happens when you turn the ball over 5 times. With that badness out of the way, let’s just talk about how good it was to see Mosley see the ball go into the basket. After scoring 10 points last game, Mosley dropped 18 points last night and made his first three pointer of the season. Needless to say, the implementation of the Mosley offense has taken some time to get going. But you could tell that Dennis Gates wanted to give Mosley a long look in the second half. In the first half, Mosley had 0 points on 0 shots and 2 turnovers. In the second half he took 14 shots and had 3 turnovers. Basically, he went from non-existent to half of the possessions in the second half. He also was on the floor for 18 minutes. It feels like that might be a little bit of a turning point.

But let’s not spend the entire time talking about a guy who couldn’t even make the top 3. D’Moi Hodge has been a one man wrecking crew when he’s been on the floor. He’s not shy about getting shots up (12 in 30 minutes), but he generates so much havoc on defense and only takes catch and shoot 3s and at the rim layups, so it works.

Nick Honor is so valuable. 6 assists, no turnovers, 3 steals, 4-of-5 from the floor, +19 in 25 minutes. And look at his Floor Rate below. LOL

So a couple notes, the rotation was 9 last night. The starting five remained the same, but Noah Carter, DeAndre Gholston, and Tre Gomillion took a little bit more of a backseat than they have so far. Kaleb Brown took his first DNP, and Mohamed Diarra took one, too. That was to give Mosley the runway he needed. Aidan Shaw is one of the beneficiaries of the early season minutes, being given over 40% of the minutes so far. And Shaw has mostly made it work. The turnover rate is high (hello, Freshman!), but his efficiency is still high and he’s doing the one thing Gates wants him to do which is rebound. Dunks, rebounds, and defense. That’s Aidan Shaw so far.

As Mosley hit 49% (!!!) usage last night, and his 18 minute run in the second half was passing by, it gave me some hope. We think Mosley can be more efficient once he’s comfortable. And that’s the best case scenario for Missouri, because they are still running far too many possession through DeAndre Gholston. If Gholston is relegated to a role closer to that of D’Moi Hodge, things are fine. If he’s creating off the bounce, well you’ll see something closer to what he’s been so far. On Catch and Shoots he’s been good enough, and he’s solid defensively, but Missouri needs those possessions to go elsewhere.

Enter Mosley, hopefully.

There’s still a lot to work out for this team. The defense has been hit and miss. And they’ve got a better test coming up. For anyone who experienced the first half last night let me calm your nerves. Missouri was never going to lose that game. MVSU just doesn’t have the offensive firepower. So imagine last night as being one of the worse possible outcomes, the random guard from the bad team catches a heater and frustrates everyone because you should be up 15 but instead you’re only up 2.

Coastal Carolina will be a tougher test.

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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.