Familiarity can breed complacency. Towards the end of the first half and the early parts of the second half I felt the complacency set in. Here were were, Mizzou losing the game by double digits, nothing really working, turnovers galore, players forcing bad shots. It felt familiar.

But weirdly enough Mizzou found a way to get some stops and make it a game. It helps the South Carolina is not a great shooting team, and they were missing threes, long twos, bunnies, pretty much all of them. Some of it is because Mizzou forced those shots, or tough angles, and others happened because the Gamecocks are not a great offensive team.

But Missouri made it a game until a weird sequence late, when Devin Carter cut towards the basket and scored a basket over Kobe Brown. Brown was called for a foul, despite having position and being square. But instead of flopping to take a charge he opted to challenge the shot a little. Carter was strong enough to get the ball up on the glass and made the shot and went to the line and turned a one point game into a four point game.

That was it.

As much as the Tigers kept it close down the stretch, they always found a way to make the wrong play at the wrong time to keep them from completing the comeback. There was a turnover leading to a run out and a foul on a layup after they had cut the lead to four. Missing two Free Throws after making the first free throw for both DaJuan Gordon and Javon Pickett. Then there was the Kobe Brown foul on a made shot when they were down just one point.

Such is life for a bad team. When you have this kind of season you find new and interesting ways to lose.

Team Stats

• Going by the four factors, Mizzou won the shooting and free throws: but while the game was a turnover fest early, South Carolina settled and Mizzou really didn’t. I had Mizzou at 3 and SC at 4 turnovers when the score was 7-2. That was in the first frame of action. So for 36 minutes the Gamecocks only turned the ball over 5 times. While Mizzou turned it over 12 more times.
• One way Mizzou made this more competitive than it otherwise would have been: is they were competitive against a really good offensive rebounding team. SC gets to the glass, and Mizzou was able to basically keep it even.
• So it amounts to not being able to hang onto the ball: Mizzou when they got shots made them count more than SC did.

Player Stats

Your Trifecta: Javon Pickett, Kobe Brown, Trevon Brazile

On the season: Kobe Brown 44, Javon Pickett 29, Ronnie DeGray III 28, Amari Davis 24, Jarron Coleman 24, Trevon Brazile 14, DaJuan Gordon 13, Sean Durugordon 2, Yaya Keita 1, Jordan Wilmore 1

We usually start here by talking about who went right. But I want to talk about what went wrong. Namely DaJuan Gordon and Boogie Coleman, with a little hat tip towards Ronnie DeGray. As much as turnovers were the issue (they combined for 5 of the 15 TOs), so was some poor shooting from guys they needed to make shots.

Gordon had 5 points and 3 turnovers on 21% usage and 27 minutes. Boogie had 0 points and 1 turnover on 9% usage (at least he figured out he wasn’t making shots). And DeGray got to the line but otherwise only had one made basket, a turnover and 21% usage. Realistically if Boogie is a slightly GameScore positive player versus a negative player Mizzou probably completes the comeback.

Meanwhile, Pickett continues to go down swinging. He took 17 shots (!!!) and had a nearly 30% usage. When Kobe Brown was struggling, Missouri was struggling. He was in foul trouble and didn’t score in the first half. In the second half he was able to stay clear of foul trouble and had 19 points (though the last 3 at the end of the game was a little bit of a garbage bucket). But he had 9 points as Missouri mounted their comeback.

Meanwhile Trevon Brazile was really good. He just has elevator hops, and dunks the ball when you aren’t sure if he can make it to the rim.

Amari Davis had a decent game. Realistically if he wasn’t swimming in foul trouble in the first half Missouri is probably a lot better off.

So that leaves us with just one game remaining. Sure, there’s the SEC Tournament. But one regular season game, featuring the two worst teams in the league to wrap up the regular season. Two teams you have to imagine have coaches who are at the end of their rope with the administration.

We’ll have the results of the SB Nation Reacts post probably tomorrow, but I don’t think anyone will be surprised by what we find. We all wanted this to work out. Nobody (at least anyone who is reasonable) was rooting for Cuonzo Martin to not win at Missouri. There were a lot of ways this could have gone which saw Martin getting another year. But 10-20, 4-13 in conference, and an Efficiency Rating at 145th in the country was not what could happen.

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.