Did you know Arkansas is a very good offensive basketball team? If you didn’t know before Saturday, you do now!
The Razorbacks have the 4th best offense in KenPom.com’s efficiency ratings, and the best overall offense in conference play. They are behind Alabama if you include non-conference games, but against the rest of the SEC, the Hogs are on top. One of the reasons is they rarely turn the ball over, their 12.3% turn over rate is the best in the country. So when you couple good shooting with a team
that values the ball better than anyone else, you’d better bring your A+ offense to the game if you want to beat them.
Missouri brought the A game, when they needed their A+ game.
The Tigers offensive efficiency was 6th best on the season, but when it came to slowing down Arkansas, the Tigers failed and gave up their second worst efficiency on defense for the season.
What’s also interesting about this game, the Razorbacks 87.8% expected win rate was the lowest win expectancy of any game this season for the Tigers.
Going into the game, I figured Missouri would lose. Mostly for all the reasons above, the odds were simply too long. But they acquitted themselves well enough I think. Enough to think if they play that well for the next two weeks they should win enough games to feel safe going into selection Sunday.
So how did it go down?
The game was a close back and forth affair for most of the day until Billy Richmond hit a three when the Hogs were protecting a 1 point lead. If you were not totally familiar with Richmond before this game, you might think he were some hot shot shooter. When in fact you’d be wrong! Richmond is known for being an elite defender, one of the best in the league, but his offense is usually limited to transition and shots at the rim. In two seasons he’s attempted 55 three pointers and they don’t usually go in. Before Missouri rolled into town, Richmond had made just ONE three pointer in conference play. That came against Ole Miss on January 7th. Since then he was 0-12, over the course of 11 games.
So of course he went 2 of 3 against Mizzou, with his first three starting the separation that would eventually stretch to 14, before Mizzou ultimately hemmed the final at 8. Richmond’s three spurned a run from him where he scored 12 of the Razorbacks next 14 points, while the Tigers only scored 6. That 14-6 run gave Arkansas a 9 point lead, which was enough cushion for them to ride it out the rest of the way. Mizzou never got it back to within a single possession.
TEAM STATS
This really is the game here: Missouri turned the ball over 10 times, Arkansas turned it over 5 times. They each shot the ball well, went to the free throw line a lot. But the Hogs attempted five more shots, and were cleaner at the free throw line with two more attempts.
It was an offensive showdown and Mizzou just fell short.
- During the game it felt like Mizzou was losing the rebounding battle by a lot more than they did, but it basically amounted to Arkansas hitting their expected number, and the Tigers falling short. That seemed to clearly be a focus of the Arkansas scout, knowing that Mizzou generates a lot of offense off of offensive rebounds. But not a ton of offensive rebounds either way, that happens when both teams shoot it well.
- Arkansas’ BCI number is higher than anyone Mizzou has seen this year, and better than anything they’ve put up. Mizzou hit north of that number twice last year, but you have to really value the basketball. Something this team doesn’t do very well.
But if you hit 60+% eFG and go to the FT line 23 times on the road, you should feel pretty good about your chances of winning the basketball game. Unless you still lose by 8.
INDIVIDUAL STATS
Trifecta: Mark Mitchell, Trent Pierce, Jayden Stone
On the season: Mark Mitchell 52, Jayden Stone 31, Jacob Crews 19, Anthony Robinson 18, T.O. Barrett 13, Trent Pierce 10, Shawn Phillips 7, Jevon Porter 5, Sebastian Mack 3, Annor Boateng 1
Mark Mitchell more than made up for his offensive struggles against Vanderbilt with what might have been his best performance of the season. He scored more points against SEMO, and had as many points against Notre Dame, but in only one other game did he equal his efficiency while handling that much of the offense. Mark was awesome, and he did all that on offense and still had 8 assists. It’s just ridiculous. Too bad it came in a loss, but he was the KenPom MVP for the 7th time, and the trifecta leader for the 12th time. He’s also leading the team in minutes played, points, assists, and rebounds. He’s also increased his minutes played from last year, and his efficiency has gone up. Just an all time season for Mark.
One of my favorite things about Trent Pierce is how quietly he seems to put together good scoring nights. If he can find a way to be more consistent in his output, he’s a lock on the wing next year. But 22 points on 15 shots is quite good. I’m also surprised he took 15 shots.
Jayden Stone didn’t attempt a shot until he took a three with 4 seconds to play, clearly marked as another important part of the Arkansas scout was taking Stone’s FGAs away. It worked.
One of the nice surprises was Trent Burns continuing to have a positive impact. He was still a net positive on the floor, and more than held his own for the second game in a row. It’s a good thing because the post position is a big question mark going into next year, if you could have at least part of your answer with a 7’5 guy on your roster it would be a big positive.
Where Mizzou lost this contest was that while they got all time performance from Mark Mitchell, and excellent jobs from the Trents, their point guards were bad. T.O. had a rough game, he wasn’t quite as bad as he was against Texas but he struggled to defend Darius Acuff. Then when he was out with foul trouble, Anthony Robinson looked as bad as he’s looked since Alabama. If the point guards had been better, maybe that would have been enough to put them over the top in a tough environment.
But as I said in the Pourover, Mizzou was never likely to win that game. And even before the season this is a game I think we all expected them to drop.
What matters is how they play next. Win the next one.
Beat Tennessee.
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!
