It’s hard to believe it but a fairly workmanlike 22 point win over a SWAC team felt like a breath of fresh air for some reason.
Maybe it was the last game felt like a stunted crawl even if it was still a win. Or it was the drubbing by a hated rival the game before. Or the last game before that where you lost a lead on the road and watched a winnable game slip away.
Whatever it was, there was something appealing about watching Missouri do what it was supposed to do. Coming into the game Missouri was an
18 point favorite, and they won by 22. They had a 14 point half time lead, and it would have been far greater had it not been for 9 first half turnovers. Mizzou was averaging 1.34 points per shot in the first half when they attempted an actual shot. Meanwhile the defense was holding Bethune Cookman to just 0.781 points per possession. The Tigers spurted from the 4 minute mark to go up 15, and again out of the gate in the second half to go up 22.
The entire thing was pretty methodical. The lead would get up to 29. Missouri played pretty well.
Dennis Gates tried to make some extra subs at the under 4 timeout, and the subs kind of messed things up and allowed an 8-0 run. But nothing too harmful, it was too late. I don’t know if this was quite the get-right game everyone was looking for. But it’s as close to one that’s existed for at least a few weeks.
TEAM STATS
Missouri is still struggling to get to the free throw line, and they turn the ball over too often. But other than that the offense was quite good!
- Missouri completely erased BCU on the glass, +6.8 is a nice number, but only 5 offensive rebounds is really good. An ORB% under 20% happened just once under Gates heading into this year, but already they’ve had three such games. Now we’ll see if they can keep this up as the competition steps up.
- The 0.90 defensive efficiency was the 2nd best mark on the year. The best mark was against Cleveland State, which you might remember as the game that started with the Vikings not scoring for the first 9 minutes.
I will say some of the lack of getting to the line was how the game was called, and I found some of the lack of calls to be frustrating. If a guy reaches his arm in and makes contact with the ball handler, it doesn’t matter if the ball gets knocked loose or not… it’s a foul. But the whistles seemed to skip calling what I thought were obvious fouls away from the basket on several occasions. If you want to encourage players to reach and slap at the ball, then by all means don’t call those fouls. But I tend to think we should want cleaner defense away from the rim. That’s just me.
INDIVIDUAL STATS
Trifecta: Mark Mitchell, Anthony Robinson II, Jacob Crews
On the season: Mark Mitchell 26, Jacob Crews 17, Anthony Robinson 11, Jayden Stone 7, Jevon Porter 5, Shawn Phillips Jr. 4, T.O. Barrett, Annor Boateng 1
Are we just going to talk about Jacob Crews all year?
Did you know Crews has the 4th highest Offensive Rating in the country for anyone in the country. The only player with a better ORtg with a higher usage is Oscar Cluff at Purdue. Crews is 152.1, and this game might have been the best one yet. Bethune Cookman started the game in a Box and One and following Crews around taking away his three point shooting. He didn’t attempt a three for the first 10 minutes, but he was fine drawing defenders away from the rim and just pick his spots. His spots were picked well, he missed one three, one free throw, and that was it. Everything else was nails.
Also good news, Anthony Robinson looks like Anthony Robinson again! Ants last two games were an exercise in rediscovery of the guy we were hoping to see more of this year. I enjoyed the 7 assists as much as anything.
This was the Ant-Mark-Crews show. Jevon was solid in his limited action. Annor banged in a couple threes, hopefully that gets him going.
The answer for the season can’t only be what you get from the top three on the scout. Ant, Mark, and Crews have been really good. You also can’t count on Jayden Stone coming back and being aces right away. They really need another player or two to be able to step up and contribute double digit points at some point. Whether that’s Annor, or TO, or Jevon… someone needs to be a little more consistent with their offensive output.
The good news is the Q4 games are over. It’s only up from here on out.
With Illinois coming up, Missouri really needed a game to get a better hold on what they’re trying to be. And this game looked like the most cohesive version we’ve seen yet. Let’s hope it’s just the first step towards a re-establishment of what we thought they could be coming into the season.
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!
