Study Hall: Makin’ Threes

Jan 25, 2023 - 1:30 PM

After slogging through a bad shooting night on Saturday in making just 3 of 28 attempts from beyond the arc, Mizzou needed just over 3 minutes to equal the number of makes on the road at Ole Miss last night. Isiaih Mosley, in his first start under Dennis Gates, missed the team's first three-point attempt. But from there the Tigers hit the next five in a row en route to shooting 16-30 on the night.

The 16 makes equaled the Tigers’ best this season (they made 16 of 35 against Penn) and was their most ever in SEC play, and snapped the team out of a cold shooting streak going back to the Vanderbilt game. So it was definitely refreshing to see Mizzou scoring the ball in a way they haven’t in a few weeks. Kobe Brown was back in the lineup, Mosley was starting. And Ole Miss has been wobbly. Things were lined up for a revival. Even if it meant a few other weaknesses popped back up.

The defense again was leaky. Ole Miss has been over 1.0 points per possession just twice since conference play started, but were at 1.11 against Mizzou. The Tigers also gave up 18 second chance points on 16 offensive rebounds.

But to their credit, winning on the road, no matter who your opponent is, never easy. Conference road wins, specifically, should never be taken for granted.

Team Stats

• 89 points on 69 possessions is blistering offense: even more blistering when you consider the 11 turnovers. The pace of the game seemed slow, but part of that is giving up 16 offensive rebounds as well. If Mizzou were able to keep the Rebels off the glass the pace is probably up closer to around 73 or 74 possessions.
• After a sloppy first half with the basketball: Mizzou had just three turnovers after the break. When your shooting is what it was, around 70% eFG, it’s important to get shots and not turn the ball over. Turnovers in the first half gave the Rebels some life and kept them in the game when Mizzou could have gone into halftime up around 20 points. So while Mizzou only had three 2nd Half turnovers, Ole Miss had nine.
• Defensively, Mizzou isn’t getting any better: they do some things well but there just seems to be no real answer to them improving in the half-court. Having Mohamed Diarra in the rotation and being effective does help them with rebounding, and provides some rim protection. But it wasn’t enough against Ole Miss as they just crushed Missouri on the offensive glass.

Sometimes game flow can dictate other things. Mizzou put immediate game pressure on Ole Miss with their early makes, could that have forced a poor offensive team missing their best scorer to locate the bottom of the net in new ways? Maybe. It’s also worth pointing out that Missouri has shot over 50% from deep in three games now. So this isn’t an absurd percentage for them. We’re 20 games in, and they’ve made 10 or more threes in half their games. When Mizzou makes nine or more threes, they’re undefeated. Against Ole Miss they’d have needed at least 12 makes.

Player Stats

Your Trifecta: D’Moi Hodge, Kobe Brown, Isiaih Mosley

On the season: D’Moi Hodge 28, Kobe Brown 26, Nick Honor 16, Noah Carter 15, Sean East II 13, DeAndre Gholston 10, Tre Gomillion 5, Isiaih Mosley 5, Mohamed Diarra 3

Welcome back, D’Moi Hodge! Hodge is back in the trifecta for the first time since the Vandy game, and his first trifecta win since UCF. D’Moi Hodge playing well and making outside shots is as paramount to the success of the team as anything else this year. Maybe you don’t need a 24 point, 4 rebound, 2 assist night from him each night, but when he’s confident and making outside shots and getting rim runs, Mizzou is better for it.

Mizzou is also better the more Isiaih Mosley gets acclimated. You had to figure it was a matter of time until the 3-pointers started to fall, and last night they were. He and Kobe Brown form a really interesting duo who are just as good at facilitation as they are putting the ball through the rim. And last night we got a glimpse of what Mosley and Brown (when Kobe is making outside shots on top of it) can do together.

We’re also gonna shout out Mo Diarra here. We knew before the season Diarra had talent, but it might take him some time to put things together. It looks like he’s beginning to put it together. I mentioned above, Gates doesn’t need Diarra to be the answer at the rim. But to just be helpful.

Tough night for Nick Honor and DeAndre Gholston. Gholston was effectively benched in the second half after no shots and three turnovers in 12 minutes of the 1st half. He’s usually reliable for effort and some defense, but his ball handling was weak. Everyone is entitled to an off night. So he got parked. Honor was also not great. He’s always so secure with the basketball, but his passing was a little off the mark, and he’s still struggling to make his jump shots.

But it didn’t matter much because everyone else was so good offensively. Even Noah Carter, who wasn’t a standout at all, was solid. Just 30% minutes but 27% usage and 113.3 ORtg with a 42% Floor Rate. That’ll play most nights. Secretly, Kaleb Brown got some minutes and was really pretty good. A couple steals, a couple assists.

But this game was all about the trifecta of Isaiah Mosley, Kobe Brown, and D’Moi Hodge getting the offense going all at once. Tre Gomillion was out with a groin injury, and it was probably a good time since it allowed Gates to play with some other lineups and get more flexibility with Mosley.

While the defense left something to be desired, it was an important win. With the schedule the way it is there were games you really kind of needed to win. And at Ole Miss was one of them. Missouri went 5-5 through a really tough 10 game stretch, and while a very difficult game awaits this Saturday against Iowa State, the schedule opens up a bit after that.

It’s easy to forget Mizzou was actually a 1-point underdog per KenPom.com before this game tipped off. Winning on the road is never a given. But what the win does is keep things on track for a tournament bid. A Quad One game awaits this Saturday, and then you get three games you can win. A road game in Starkville is no walk in the park, but it’s one you can win.

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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.