If it were possibly the nearly play back the last game you played this felt pretty close.
When Mizzou played Kentucky, they struggled offensively but put together a run late and found themselves with a late lead. Only to see it all fall apart.
The game against Miami was different only because the collapse happened much later, and the lead change happened later. Against Kentucky, Mizzou took the lead with 2:34 to play. It was their first lead since it was 3-0 at the start of the game. The Wildcats would
score the next 7 points, putting the game away. Then against Miami, Mark Mitchell hit a 3 to put Missouri up 2 with 7:50 to play. The Hurricanes hit an 11-0 run after that, and the Tigers were only able to wrestle the game back to about 5 point after that, but they were outscored 23-8 over a 6 minute span which put the game away.
Why did Mizzou lose? The answer to this one is easy: They played poorly. They came in and played hard, but too many guys missed their shots. Enough that when Miami’s offense finally found some footing, the effort was long gone.
Missouri shot 31% from the floor in the first half, and were only able to generate 4 free throws. The second half was marginally better, but they still only shot 39.3%. The were buoyed a bit by the 6 second half threes, which kept the pressure on the Hurricanes but that’s not nearly enough when you only made 10 two point field goals.
The 10 made 2FGA was a tie for the lowest on the season. The other? The last time the Tigers played at Enterprise… so much for a home court advantage.
TEAM STATS
I thought the game flow was a microcosm of the entire season. Things were ugly early as the Tigers struggled to find their footing. But they figured something out in the second half and kind of got it all working, but only a little bit. Then things really fell apart late.
- The good? Miami forces a lot of turnovers but Mizzou took care of the ball. Even the majority of their turnovers were of the unforced variety, and very few led to runouts.
- The rebounding. Oy.
- It was a slower paced game, and Missouri held the Miami offense in check and under one point per possession until the final 7 minutes.
Miami was credited with 19 second chance points, which is one of those things you can’t fully adjust for. But the rebounding disparity was so egregious that it’s hard not to envision a scenario where the Tigers are more competitive on the glass and this is a single possession game late.
That’s just a lot of extra shots to account for. But what’s interesting is the Hurricanes were only +2 in expected rebounds while the Tigers were erased on the glass. That might be the bigger takeaway here, Mizzou has been a top 50 offensive rebounding unit and they got nothing there.
INDIVIDUAL STATS
Trifecta: Jayden Stone, Anthony Robinson II, Mark Mitchell
On the season: Mark Mitchell 64, Jayden Stone 37, Anthony Robinson 22, Jacob Crews 19, T.O. Barrett 18, Shawn Phillips 13, Trent Pierce 12, Jevon Porter 5, Sebastian Mack 3, Trent Burns 1, Annor Boateng 1
The sheer irony of Jayden Stone scoring 21 points and being -22 in the plus-minus score… you know by now I don’t put much stock into an individual +/- since it can be so circumstantial. That’s just one of those box score quirks. Stone was good. Everyone else was not.
Anthony Robinson II was solid, but he’s shown he’s not super confident in being a higher usage guard. Thus he was on the floor for 72% of the minutes and had just 11.2% of the possessions. Still that 1.8+ ppp is a good rate, and he wasn’t the problem.
It stinks this was Mark’s last game. He was so good all year, and Miami loaded up to make sure he wasn’t going to beat them. Mark shared the ball to his teammates and they largely let him down.
T.O. Barrett’s line was just ugly. I thought there might be room for TO to have a good game, because Miami wanted to be physical and TO likes being physical… but he was about as bad as we’ve seen him. So much so Gates only played him 15 minutes.
Here’s the combined line from Trent Pierce, Barrett, and Jacob Crews: 61 minutes, 22 FGA, 2 FGM, 7 points. All 7 points from Pierce.
If you gave me that line before the game and asked me to predict the outcome i would have guessed a 20 point loss. The margin for error for this team in the second half of the season has largely been predicated on thin margins. To have three of your rotational guys take 22 shots and net 7 points out of them is just too much ground to make up.
I’ve already written my RIP Mizzou Basketball piece so there are no larger takeaways here. But after publishing that piece I feel like there were a lot of commenters who seem to think Gates job might be in the remotest sense of jeopardy. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Gates’ job is as safe as anyone in the SEC right now. Maybe to a slightly less degree than Todd Golden, Nate Oats or John Calipari.
Friday night went poorly. But this has been a flawed team for more than the last week or two. They’ve been a questionable squad for months. There was some mojo-magic Gates and the staff pulled to get to 10 wins in the SEC, and somehow managed to get back into the tournament picture. My opinion on this team hasn’t changed since December when they were getting run out of the gym by Kansas and Illinois. So that they made the tournament was a minor miracle to me.
If Gates wants to achieve what he says he does, he’ll need a big spring. I think he can get there.
But then I also think Missouri being an NCAA Tournament team 3 out of 4 years for the first time since 2013 is a good thing. And back to back Tournaments since the same year is a positive. I’m not happy with how the season played out because I think the staff’s roster construction wasn’t good enough to take advantage of the talent they already had. But none of that matters now. All that matters is Gates putting together another tournament level team next season, but with a guy like Jason Crowe on board, his sights should be slightly higher than just making it to the Tourney. Maybe… win a game or two… or more.
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!
