FLAMETHROWERS ENGAGE!
Playing Alabama is stressful. Their style of play creates that environment on purpose and a lot of teams crack because it’s really, really hard to keep up with the offensive pace over the course of 40 minutes. There is no let up. Conventional basketball might see a team call a timeout to regather themselves after their opponent goes on an 8-0 run. But Alabama doesn’t play conventional basketball. They race the ball up the floor and look for another straight-line drive, they try to generate a rim attack and either get to the line or spray the ball out for threes.
I was initially a little skeptical of Nate Oats bringing a very James Harden in Houston-like style NBA offense to college basketball. Mostly because the games are shorter and the shooters are worse and prone to more variance. An NBA game is long enough that you can level variances within a game. In college most teams play at a middling pace, only around 50 teams play at a pace above 70 possessions per game, so it’s harder to balance a few extra misses from three-point range.
For the most part, Oats has solved this. Alabama has mini-variances throughout the game. They’ll go 1-7 from outside and then make their next four. Against Missouri, Alabama shot 41.9% from deep, and they had those streaks throughout their 31 attempts. Three of their first 9, then 7 of 9. But then just three of their last 13. This is the stress of playing Bama. Each of those threes felt like a dagger. And yet Mizzou’s margin never dipped below 6.
In a game of 80 possessions where Alabama shot 42% from deep and over 60% inside the arc, they never were closer than 6 points and the Tigers led from wire to wire. Nate Oats has now coached at Alabama now for 197 games. When they shoot 40% or better from three and 50% or better from two, they are 41-3 with an average margin of victory north of 23 points. If you add in the Tide scoring 90 points or more, that record climbs to 31-1.
Nobody has been able to beat Alabama when they shoot north of 40% on threes, 50% on twos, and score 90 points or more.
Nobody until Wednesday night.
Team Stats
- It was just a terrific game plan on offense for the Tigers: they bet nobody on Alabama could defend Mark Mitchell and they were right. Part of an 81% free throw rate is having guys who can draw fouls and Mitchell drew eight of them himself. Caleb Grill drew seven fouls as well. And what’s great about getting to the free throw line is even when you’re having a below par shooting night at the line, you’re still getting over 1.2 points per possession on those trips.
- Missouri also knew they could exploit the size of Alabama’s guards: Outside of Cliff Omoruyi they don’t have any real rim protection. Missouri could match up Mitchell against Omoruyi to force him to guard more in space, but they also punished the smaller Bama guards at the rim. And it didn’t matter who Bama threw at Mitchell, in all a 74.3% shooting from 2FG is scorching hot and by far Alabama’s worst mark this season. In fact, Missouri is the only team to shoot north of 70% from 2FG against an Oats coached Alabama team.
- Missouri has also been so good at taking care of the ball: an easy way to get on the ropes against the Tide is giving away possessions. Missouri has had three games where they’ve given the ball away too much, and they won two of them. You can get away with it a little when you play Vanderbilt and Oklahoma at home, but not Alabama. You have to limit them in as many ways possible. Mizzou forced a moderate number of turnovers, but they also didn’t give the ball away and were +6 in net possessions.
I think I’m just so impressed by how good Missouri’s offense was because Alabama was REALLY GOOD. Well, Mark Sears was awesome; he scored 35 points. Labaron Philon was solid, so was Mo Dioubate and Aden Holloway. But Missouri did make life difficult for Grant Nelson and Chris Youngblood. Omoruyi didn’t score a field goal. Regardless of who was doing the scoring they still put 98 points on the board and Missouri was just able to keep a better pace all game long.
Player Stats
Your Trifecta: Mark Mitchell, Caleb Grill, Anthony Robinson II
On the season: Mark Mitchell 35, Tamar Bates 30, Caleb Grill 25, Anthony Robinson II 21, Tony Perkins 16, Trent Pierce 11, Marques Warrick 10, Jacob Crews 5, Josh Gray, Marcus Allen 1, Aidan Shaw 1
I don’t mean this to take away from how awesome Mark Mitchell was, but there is a bit of a difference from the rim protection of Alabama and Texas A&M or that of Tennessee. That being said, you still have to make the shots and Mark was just relentless, and Dennis Gates was relentless in going to him. When Alabama cut the lead to 6 with just under 10 minutes left, it was Mitchell on back-to-back possessions which helped get the lead back up. A 9-0 run got things back up to 15.
And when Mitchell wasn’t collecting buckets at the rim, Grill was answering from the floor. 10-11 from the free throw line and two mid-range jumpers we’re not used to seeing from him. Grill hasn’t had his traditional flame throwing three-point shooting night in recent games, but he’s still been good from deep. And a lot of his attempts have a higher grade of difficulty versus whatever Ole Miss or Mississippi State were letting him do.
Another game of a lot of green in the ol’ Offensive Rating category. And another fancy amount of green in the turnover rate category. As I’ve noted in the past, a good number on Floor Rate is 40%. Basically, if you played more than a few minutes you hit that mark and then some.
I also liked that Gates relied heavily on Mitchell and Grill in minutes, and he was able to rest Anthony Robinson, Tamar Bates, and Tony Perkins a fair amount so when the last 4 minutes came in all three were very fresh. And you could tell.
Alabama kept coming, and Missouri kept holding them off. Anytime Alabama cut into the lead, Missouri had an answer. I’ve watched a hefty amount of the Crimson Tide of the years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team go blow for blow with them offensively when they’re playing like they were on Wednesday.
Missouri wasn’t running into the teeth of the ‘85 Bears or anything. The offensive effort probably wasn’t even as good as they were against Tennessee if you consider the level of defense UT plays. Maybe even Georgia. But Alabama isn’t a bad defense. They weren’t great last year (111th in Adjusted D) but they’re much better than they were a year ago (now around 46th). You can only play who’s in front of you and this was Mizzou’s 3rd best game in Offensive Efficiency. First and second on that list are Mississippi Valley State and Arkansasa Pine Bluff.
Yep, Mizzou treated Alabama like they did a SWAC school. The only difference was Alabama’s offense was good enough to stick around.
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 on 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 that 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 approximates how many possessions an individual is responsible for within the team’s calculated possessions.
ShotRate%: This is the percentage of a team’s 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.
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.