Road games are hard to predict.

Heading into this game Mizzou was just 3-5 in true road games, with wins over Ole Miss, Tennessee, and Wichita State. They hadn’t really lost to anyone who is bad, but they certainly lost badly to more than a few teams. Stinkers on the road against Texas A&M, Auburn, and Mississippi State let you know the Tigers may not be a team you can trust.

Meanwhile Georgia has been really pretty good at home. At 13-2 they hold wins over Kentucky and Auburn, and the two losses were close! The Bulldogs were challenged by coming off two horrific road losses when they got smoked by Alabama and Arkansas.

There wasn’t a real clear way with which this game was going to go. So when Georgia took he floor and proceeded to bomb away, making 8-17 first half threes, Missouri was able to hang around and were only down a point at halftime. I was heartened by that. If the Dawgs come out and hit another 8 threes, hey you tip your cap. But they’re one of the worst offenses in the league and are 9th in the SEC for three point shooting. The numbers said that probably wasn’t going to happen. And it didn’t.

Georgia made just 2 more threes in the second half. While the Tigers made 7 in each half. Mizzou was scoring the ball and forcing turnovers. All they needed was Georgia to cool off a bit from three. So when the Dawgs went cold, the route was on.

Team Stats

• You might think a 70.2% eFG is the best of the season but you’d be wrong: Mizzou’s offensive shooting was only slightly worse than their performance against Houston Christian, who has the worst defense in Division 1 basketball. That number was boosted by excellent three point shooting, and when you consider the Tigers started 0-6 from outside, and finished 0-3. So in between? Just a casual 14-19, or 73%.
• A lot of you may note that the rebound margin was even!: But I’ll point out that Georgia had as many turnovers as made field goals. And as many turnovers as they did missed 3s. Basically they turned the ball over so much any offensive rebounds were going to be mitigated. If you’re going to keep the game close against Mizzou, you can’t cough the ball up as often as Georgia did.

That was basically the game. Mizzou figured out early they could score it against Georgia. They turned them over enough to negate any rebounding issues, and then when the Bulldogs went cold, Mizzou knocked them out.

Player Stats

Your Trifecta: Nick Honor, D’Moi Hodge, Noah Carter

On the season: Kobe Brown 45, D’Moi Hodge 43, Nick Honor 21, Sean East II 18, Noah Carter 18, DeAndre Gholston 15, Tre Gomillion 6, Isiaih Mosley 5, Mohamed Diarra 4

The last time Kobe Brown did not make a trifecta was the Alabama game, when he didn’t play! But in a way it was nice to see some other guys get in there. This has been the year of Kobe, with a nod to D’Moi Hodge for being the Robin to Kobe’s Batman. But Kobe took a backseat for this game, in fact Brown subbed out just before the under 16 timeout in the second half and didn’t come back in until there was 9:45 to play and the lead had gone from 7 to 17.

Much of that was because Nick Honor didn’t stop once he buried Mississippi State. He hit 5 of 7 threes, dished out 4 assists, and was the most impactful player on the floor. A plus 24 when Honor was on the floor.

It’s wild to me that D’Moi Hodge took zero 2FGs. No run outs, no cuts. Nothing there for what we’re accustomed to, but he took 11 3FGs and made 6. Hodge finding his stroke it what kept Mizzou in the game in the first half, and he helped give them the lead. But it was Honor, Noah Carter, and everyone else who took the rest of the wind out of Georgia’s sails.

It was a relatively low possession game, and only Hodge hit the over on 10.0 possessions. The balance really worked this time because so many options were working. Sean East hit a three, DeAndre Gholstonj was hitting tough guarded mid range shots, and even Aidan Shaw got on the floor and made an impact.

This game is just further evidence of the fact that when Mizzou can score the ball, they become just that much more difficult to play against. If the shots aren’t falling, obviously things can get pretty sticky. But when they are, they can make even really good teams chase them. So when they make shots like they did yesterday, you can blow out a bad team.

Turning the page, this week is an important week. A road game against last place LSU and a home game against second to last place Ole Miss. If Mizzou wins out that means a top 4 seed in the SEC tournament is on the table pending other results. If you look at who is ahead of them, everyone’s schedule is tough. The highest they could reach is a 3, but I’d expect Kentucky will win at least one more game, so maybe keep an eye on what Auburn and Tennessee do. At 9-7, the Tigers own the head-to-head tie breaker over Vanderbilt but not Auburn. They hold the tie breaker over Tennessee. So if UT goes 1-1 and Mizzou goes 2-0 that could be enough.

More than anything, just win your last two games. Start by beating LSU.

Yesterday’s SEC Results:

• Alabama (1) 86, Arkansas 83
• Tennessee (11) 85, South Carolina 45
• Mississippi State 69, Texas A&M (25) 62
• Kentucky 86, Auburn 54
• Vanderbilt 88, Florida 72
• Ole Miss 82, LSU 69

And the Current Standings with remaining opponents:

1. Alabama 15-1 — vs Auburn, at Texas A&M
2. Texas A&M 13-3 — at Ole Miss, vs Alabama
3. Kentucky 11-5 — vs Vanderbilt, at Arkansas
4. Tennessee 10-6 — vs Arkansas, at Auburn
5. Auburn 9-7 — at Alabama, vs Tennessee
6. Missouri 9-7 — at LSU, vs Ole Miss
7. Vanderbilt 9-7 — at Kentucky, vs Mississippi State
8. Arkansas 8-8 — at Tennessee, vs Kentucky
9. Mississippi State 7-9 — vs South Carolina, at Vanderbilt
10. Florida 7-9 — at Georgia, vs LSU
11. Georgia 6-10 — vs Florida, at South Carolina
12. South Carolina 3-13 — at Mississippi State, vs Florida
13. Ole Miss 3-13 — vs Texas A&M, at Missouri
14. LSU 2-14 — vs Missouri, at Florida

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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.

%Min: This is easy, it’s the percentage of minutes a player played which were available to them. That would be 40 minutes, or 45 if the game goes to overtime.

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.

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. This combined with Usage Rate gives you a sense of impact on the floor.

IndPoss: This is approximates how many possessions an individual is responsible for within the teams calculated possessions.

ShotRate%: This is the percentage of teams shots a player takes while on the floor.

AstRate%: Attempts to estimate the number of assists a player has on teammates made field goals when he is on the floor. The formula is basically AST / (((MinutesPlayed / (Team MP / 5)) * Team FGM) - FGM).

TORate%: Attempts to estimate the number of turnovers a player commits in their individual possessions. The formula is simple: TO / IndPoss

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.

In attempting to update Study Hall, I’m moving away from Touches/Possession and moving into the Rates a little more. This is a little experimental so if there’s something you’d like to see let me know and I’ll see if there’s an easy visual way to present it.