No Mizzou basketball season is complete these days without a really ugly and disappointing trip to Mississippi. Let’s see there was:

• 2013: a 15 point loss to Ole Miss
• 2014: a 3 point loss to cap a 3 game losing streak in Oxford
• Take your pick from 2015-2017...
• 2018: Mizzou lost by 12 at Mississippi State
• 2019: 10 point loss at Ole Miss, 19 point loss to State
• 2020: 27 point loss at State, 8 point loss to Ole Miss
• 2021: 21 point loss at Ole Miss

So while we’ve made a big deal of Mizzou’s struggles against Ole Miss they’ve actually been far worse against Mississippi State. Since joining the SEC, the Tigers are 3-10 against MSU. That includes just one win in their last 11 tries. Since beating MSU by 42 in 2013, Mizzou had made 7 trips to Starkville and most of them went about like last night. The average margin of defeat has 16.5 points, and there has been zero wins.

Last night was just the latest version. Aiding in Mizzou’s struggles were the fact they arrived at the Arena with no shoot around after weather caused delays to their travel. Not an excuse for them to lay such an egg, but we’ve seen this play before.

Team Stats

• The Missouri offense has been a tenuous thing all year: they’re capable of being efficient in stretches, but much of that relies upon proficient shooting from 2FG and 38.2% just won’t cut it. Especially when you can’t hit 3s either.
• Then you add in the usual turnover problems: and it’s just a recipe for a road disaster. Mizzou only had 48 possessions where they didn’t turn the ball over and generated just 49 points in those possessions. If it wasn’t for them being nearly perfect and making 14 points from the FT line it would have been far worse of a blowout.

I feel like we’ve forever talked about teams with little margin for error. Missouri again, is a team without a margin for error and last night there were a lot of errors. They don’t defend well enough to shoot this poorly. And they don’t shoot well enough to defend this poorly. On a night where you give up 1.11 points per possession and 56% from 2FG (it didn’t matter that MSU can’t hit the broad side of a barn from 3), the Tigers couldn’t afford a 34.3% eFG.

Player Stats

Your Trifecta: Ronnie Degray III, Trevon Brazile, Kobe Brown

On the season: Kobe Brown 39, Ronnie DeGray III 28, Amari Davis 22, Jarron Coleman 21, Javon Pickett 18, Trevon Brazile 12, DaJuan Gordon 12, Sean Durugordon 2, Yaya Keita 1, Jordan Wilmore 1

Kobe was nearly absent all game and still made the trifecta. It was just that kind of a night. I really don’t think when the coaching staff was putting together the roster that they figured Ronnie DeGray was going to be the second most important player on the roster, yet here we are after 26 games and it’s evident this team needs him.

One thing it can’t handle is a negative game score from Amari Davis.

Bad offense leads to poor floor rates.

Missouri found success for a while playing methodical and detailed offense. That hasn’t worked for two games now, mainly because they haven’t shot well enough from outside to keep the driving lanes cleared.

But more than anything the defense has been what’s most disappointing. The common refrain in sports is that your offense can come and go, but defense travels. Missouri’s defense isn’t going anywhere. The Tigers are fielding the 2nd worst defense in conference. There are only so many chances left to make the kind of impression Cuonzo and his staff want to make for getting more time. The product has been inconsistent and the roster rebuild looks poor.

I’m going to wrap this up because realistically we’ll be right back here before too long. We’ve only gotten half of the likely 120ish possessions of Missouri vs Mississippi State action. The next version is Sunday at 7pm.

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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.