Since this is a little later than usual we’ll be more brief. But I thought the more important thing to talk about what comes next after the season. Realistically Missouri has, at most, two games left. They’ll play tomorrow in the opening round of the SEC tournament. If they win they’ll play LSU, a team with an elite defense who already beat Mizzou by 20 points just a little more than a week ago.

But as long as there are games to talk about, we’ll talk about them. Senior day is tricky. There’s almost always a ceremony, which throws off the usual routine. And even in MIssouri’s case, where they have just one senior, there’s emotions that go into the game which aren’t normal.

I feel like the game usually goes one of two ways, the home team comes out like gangbusters, and races out to a big lead. Or they come out sluggish, and fall behind. Unfortunately for Missouri, they did the latter. Fortunately for Missouri, they did it against Georgia, who is terrible.

Team Stats

• What really jumped out to me was the rebounding: Mizzou was +19 in the overall rebounding margin, including the +8 in offensive rebounds. When you don’t shoot the ball all that well it helps to generate second opportunities. When Missouri missed, they got another shot. When Georgia missed, they didn’t.
• The number of times Mizzou has been outshot by their opponent at the free throw line: once the shots stopped falling for the Dawgs, it was really their only offense. A 67% Free Throw rate is the second highest on the season for Mizzou’s defense behind their trip to play at Vanderbilt. Fortunately Georgia wasn’t hitting a a high clip, so while they took 33 FTs, they only hit 63% of them.

The game was definitely played at Georgia’s pace, but they’re so leaky defensively it wasn’t anything that hurt Missouri. The important thing during Georgia’s hot start was not falling too far behind. Getting down 14 in the first five minutes isn’t ideal, but it never got worse. Georgia made their first 10 shots, then made just 12 for their next 39 attempts.

Player Stats

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

On the season: Kobe Brown 47, Ronnie DeGray III 30, Javon Pickett 29, Amari Davis 24, Jarron Coleman 24, Trevon Brazile 15, DaJuan Gordon 13, Sean Durugordon 2, Yaya Keita 1, Jordan Wilmore 1

This game was as much about Javon Pickett as anything. And Javon struggled early. It took until 12:12 left in the game for Javon to make his first field goal, and that basket tied the game at 51. So as Pickett took off, so did the Missouri offense. They went from tying the game to up 10 in a short period mostly off the back of Picket waking up his offense.

But the MVP was Kobe Brown, limited in the first half due to foul trouble, Georgia had nobody on their team who could stop him, and Jaxson Etter wasn't it. Brown was 7 of 8 from inside the arc, and had 15 second half points.

This game was a perfect example of why Boogie Coleman is so valuable. When Boogie is able to make 3s it opens up so much within the offense, even if he does turn the ball over... * gulp * 7 times.

It also feels like Mizzou is doing a good job of figuring out how to play with Trevon Brazile more and more. Just put the ball somewhere in the vicinity of the basket and he’ll do the rest.

It was a solid day for everyone, which was enjoyable. I get that this team has been frustrating in their inconsistency, but when things are clicking they can be a pretty fun team to watch. I don’t think it moves the needle much for Cuonzo Martin and his future. I tend to think no results at this point are going to send the decision one way or the other. We know what the result of the season has been for a while. Disappointing to say the least.

What comes next is a game against Ole Miss in the SEC Tournament. What comes after is what we all want to know.

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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.