Starting off the SEC basketball season, if I’d have told you Missouri would be 1-2 on the road, I’m sure we’d all have guessed the one win was at Kentucky, right?
It is disappointing to start off with a big road win over a program like Kentucky, only to follow up with losses to teams who have yet to win a game in league play. Perhaps you can excuse the Ole Miss loss. They’ve since won two more games over Georgia and Mississippi State, both on the road. Plus Chris Beard had the Rebels in the NCAA Tournament
last year, he was just searching for the right combination to get his squad going this year.
But the LSU game was particularly disappointing, however. The Bayou Bengals have been floundering. Matt McMahon is in his fourth season having yet to make an NCAA Tournament, and they only won three SEC games last year. Plus, the Tigers were playing without their starting point guard and leading scorer Dedan Thomas.
Mizzou began the game with such a malaise, they missed their first 7 shots and had two turnovers on top of that. They didn’t score a point for nearly 6 minutes, against a team without a league win, and with the worst defensive efficiency in SEC play.
Fortunately for Missouri, LSU isn’t great and they were only up 10 when Mizzou finally got a shot to fall.
And that’s where it gets even more frustrating. A slow start? Okay fine, just recover and chip away at the lead and get it close by half time.
Nope! Mizzou was able to keep things from getting too out of hand, but had no way of slowing down Marquel Sutton. The senior transfer from Omaha dropped in 19 points in the first half, including 7 of 8 from the FT line. Then in the second half, LSU made enough shots to keep the Tigers at arms length despite a couple charges at getting things closer.
It seemed like every time Mizzou cut into the lead, an LSU Tiger made a three. When TO Barrett’s layup cut the lead to 3, Pablo Tamba made his fifth three of the entire season to extend it back to 6. Barrett hit a few free throws a bit later to again cut the lead to three when Rashad King, a 26.7% shooter on the season, knocked in a three to again extend it back out.
It was just enough shotmaking to keep Mizzou in jail, and they were playing poorly enough to never really string anything more together.
TEAM STATS
Mizzou’s free throw shooting has been an issue all season, but surprisingly enough they shot it well in Baton Rouge. After missing half their attempts at Ole Miss, knocking in 80% sounds great. But they were overall pretty poor everywhere else.
- REBOUNDING! If you can believe it Mizzou got creamed on the glass. It honestly doesn’t make much sense, LSU isn’t a great rebounding team. They’re solid, middle of the pack. And Missouri has gone toe-to-toe with far better rebounding teams. So I guess there’s regression. Oh joy!
- The BCI is pretty awful. I’ve said before when outside shots aren’t falling the assist rate usually remains low, but Missouri’s 12 turnovers were really problematic.
Offensively Mizzou held their own with LSU’s also woeful shooting, they went to the free throw line more, but they turned the ball over and got spanked on the glass. LSU had 13 more field goal attempts thanks to those two key categories.
INDIVIDUAL STATS
Trifecta: Jayden Stone, Shawn Phillips, Mark Mitchell
On the season: Mark Mitchell 34, Jacob Crews 19, Jayden Stone 18, Anthony Robinson 17, Jevon Porter 5, Sebastian Mack 3, Trent Pierce 3, T.O. Barrett 1, Annor Boateng 1
If you were thinking Anthony Robinson II had figured himself out following his 19 point effort against Florida, you’d have been incorrect. Robinson only played 17 minutes and had the worst plus-minus on the team. His four points seems to be about the way things have gone offensively, Robinson’s only averaging 6 points a game over his last four. Plus the three turnovers… it’s just been a bad stretch for one of the most important players in the rotation. Missouri needs Ant to turn it around.
The flip side is T.O. Barrett has been playing really well, he narrowly missed the trifecta with 11 points and 5 rebounds, plus four assists. The 5 turnovers were a drag, and another reason why Ant needs to get right. But if TO can cull the TOs a bit, the rest of his game is kind of rounding into shape. His assist rate is up, his shooting around the rim is good, it’s just that his offensive efficiency is struggling because his turnovers are too high.
Respect to Jayden Stone for his efforts, but him being the primary driver of offense for the Tigers is part of the problem. Not that Stone isn’t capable of being a scorer, he’s done that. But he’s not who you want sucking up a quarter of the possessions when he’s playing 35-plus minutes per game.
Mark Mitchell got things going more in the second half, but he fought foul trouble in the first half (and really parts of the entire game).
It was as if LSU had plans to stop Mark and Ant, and didn’t really worry much about the rest of the scouting report. Once Mizzou went to a lineup that didn’t feature either, they started making some headway. But the problem with the roster is they can’t withstand both Ant and Mark being ineffective.
For the Tigers game to travel on the road, they’re going to need to make a few more shots, obviously. But perhaps a reallocation of some of the possessions might help. The Tigers continue to get good performances from just not enough players who are getting minutes. Also, it’s not for nothing here but I’d hate to point out that a big Missouri run happened with Trent Burns on the floor.
Up next is a pair of winnable home games. Georgia, who have been in the top 25 for several weeks, and Oklahoma, who can’t seem to catch a break. Two important games to stay ahead of the curve on wins in the league, since you’re only one up on the road.
I’ve moved the glossary to a static page at RockM+ to reduce the size of the bottom of this post.
So if you’re looking for what any of these stats mean, Check out the Glossary!
In attempting to update Study Hall, I’ve moved 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.
If there’s something you’d like to see more of an explanation on, drop a note and let me know!
