A little different approach we’re gonna talk about two games in one post.

Mizzou’s SEC Tournament run came to a close as expected. They weren’t upset in their first round and didn’t pull off the upset in the second.

I think if you’re Dennis Gates, you have to be pretty pleased with how things played out. Coming into the tournament a few areas of concern had popped up, mostly on the defensive side of things. But offensively the only thing that’s been working all the time has been Mark Mitchell. What hasn’t been working has been the consistency of Tamar Bates, Tony Perkins, and Anthony Robinson. So if anything, Mitchell being pushed off the court with what’s been deemed a non-serious knee injury, might be a good thing as it forced the other three to take on more of a primary scoring role.

Mitchell is fine. But sitting him ensures he’ll be ready to go for the NCAA Tournament, and now you have three guards who have been struggling with consistency playing better.

They were also not playing all that well defensively.

They’ve gotten back to playing the way you want them to on that end. Even against Kentucky the defense was better, the ‘Cats just shot it well from outside and even made some tough guarded threes. Mississippi State didn’t shoot it near as well from deep, but were only able to shoot 50% from inside the arc. Yes Florida went a little crazy from 2FG, but there are a couple points there:

Florida is legitimately good especially in around the rim, they’re in the 95th percentile at the rim per Synergy
Mizzou was solid defensively until Josh Gray fouled out and Gates gambled with a 5 guard lineup.

The Gators then turned around and beat Alabama by 20+ points so it makes your 14 point loss a little easier to take. It’s also worth pointing out that the Gators jumped to a 10-0 lead, and were up 14 at just after the under 12 timeout. The Tigers were able to cut it down multiple times, but Florida is steaming towards a 1 seed for a reason. They were always able to make a play.

Team Stats

Total possessions: 147

Offensive PPP: 1.13

Defensive PPP: 1.14

Against MSU, Missouri was outshot from the field by 11, but were +2 inside the arc, +6 outside the arc, and +4 at the free throw line. Then against Florida, the Tigers outshot the Gators by 13, but were only +2 inside the arc, -15 behind the arc, and -1 at the line. This tells you that Mizzou did not shoot the ball well, but they did attack the rim and did not make many of their attempts. Mizzou had 52 two point field goal attempts against the Gators, they rebounded the crap out of the ball to get there.

Winning the possession battle: Mizzou won the rebounding in both games. They were +1.5 against Florida and +0.3 against MSU. Turnovers were a mixed bag though. They had 14 (19%) against MSU, and 9 (12.4%) against UF, but were only able to coax 8 turnovers from the Bulldogs, while forcing the Gators into kicking the ball around 16 times. It was actually UFs second worst ball handling game on the season.

So it almost worked, had it just not been for the fireball like shooting.

Player Stats

Your Trifecta vs MSU: Tamar Bates, Tony Perkins, Anthony Robinson

Welcome back Tamar Bates! The biggest news of the weekend was the return of the guy who’s gone missing a bit lately. Tamar hasn’t been awful, just kind of missing. He was 11-21 from 2FG, 4-9 from 3FG, 7-7 from FT, with 7 rebounds in the two games combined. For Missouri to be a threat in the NCAA tournament, they need Tamar to be a factor.

Your Trifecta vs UF: Tony Perkins, Anthony Robinson, Caleb Grill

Perkins is the other big mover on the weekend. In Missouri’s three game losing streak to wrap the regular season, Perkins had just 14 points and most of those came early against Kentucky. But 33 points in the two SEC Tournament games is a lot more of what Mizzou fans thought they were getting from the transfer guard. Perkins is a physically imposing defender and a rim attack waiting to happen when he’s rolling. He got rolling.

On the season: Mark Mitchell 44, Caleb Grill 34, Tamar Bates 34, Anthony Robinson II 28, Tony Perkins 22, Marques Warrick 16, Trent Pierce 11, Jacob Crews 6, Josh Gray, Marcus Allen 1, Aidan Shaw 1

The one area of concern going into the NCAA Tournament, is Caleb Grill.

I’ll preface by saying I don’t think Missouri needs the Caleb Grill we saw earlier in the season to win some games in the NCAA Tournament. But if he can find his range again, this team is Final Four good. If he’s not? I think they can still make a run to the Sweet 16 or Elite 8, depending on matchups. But what Grill and his gravity does to this team is take the ceiling off.

Here’s what I mean:

From January 6th to February 20th — the span of 12 games — Missouri was the 2nd best team in the country per BartTorvik.com. They had the #1 offense in the country, and the #19 defense. Mizzou was 9-3 in those games.

Grill during that span made 36 of 81 from deep (which is 44.4%) and scored 180 points. His lowest Offensive Rating in the wins was 132, or 1.32 ppp. He averaged 15 points per game overall and 17.6 ppg in the wins. Grill was elite And with an elite Caleb Grill, Missouri was also elite.

Without an elite Grill, Missouri is still really really good. If they defend and rebound, the offense is consistent enough overall for them to win a few games next weekend. A sweet 16 would be a great step forward for Dennis Gates and his program. The only problem with a sweet 16 is we’ve seen the real potential of this roster, and at full go this is a Final Four level basketball team. Yes some of that hinges on a guy who throughout his college career has been streaky, but if his good streak hits at the right time there is nobody in the country who will want to face the Missouri Tigers.

STUDY HALL GLOSSARY ON ROCK M+

True Shooting Percentage (TS%): Quite simply, this calculates a player’s shooting percentage while taking into account 2FG%, 3FG%, and FT%.

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 on the average rebounds a college basketball team gets on both the defensive and offensive end.

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.

%Min: This is easy, it’s the percentage of minutes a player played that 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).

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 approximates how many possessions an individual is responsible for within the team’s calculated possessions.

ShotRate%: This is the percentage of a team’s 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.

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.