What do we always say about three point shooting?
It’s important to remember that nothing is ever static in college sports. The wins, the losses, the made shots, the misses. Good seasons, bad seasons… things change all the time.
Missouri is a really good basketball team. They play good defense, run good offense, and shoot the ball well.
Some nights you go on the road and play the fourth best team in the country and lose, because they’re the fourth ranked team in the country for a reason. One of the reasons they’re the fourth ranked team is they have the number one rated defense in the country. What I’m saying here is Tennessee is really good.
I thought going into the game Missouri might be better, and after watching the game play out I’m not convinced they aren’t still better than Tennessee.
Missouri lost this game yes, but they forced the Vols to do things they don’t normally do in order to hold serve on their home court. The Vols had to score more points (85) than they’ve scored in conference play (78), they had their best offensive efficiency in conference play, they had their worst two point shooting performance in a win in conference play which means they had (by far) their best three point shooting performance in league play by a good margin.
If you’re a believer, like I am, that three point shooting variance is just a built in part of the game and sometimes it sucks when it hits your team… well it hit Missouri. It just didn’t hit their own shooting, it was their opponents.
Team Stats
- The main issue was Tennessee’s absurd three point shooting: at one point they made 6 in a row, and 7 of their first 8 attempts. They’re not a heavy three point shooting team so those stretched from the opening possession to 15 minutes left in the 2nd half. Their shooting did its job, it kept them in the game when Missouri was humming offensively, and it gave them some needed separation once Mizzou’s offense stalled out a bit. I’m even willing to bet that the Vols knew they were playing with house money when they were sitting on 10 of 13 and really just shut it down. They attempted only two threes in the last 11+ minutes.
- Everywhere else, Missouri did their job: if you had told me they’d score 81 points, shoot 40% from three, and attempt 29 foul shots I would have assumed they won by at least 10 points. I mean really, they turned the ball over 3 times against an elite defense, held their own on the glass, and put up 1.20 points per possession. That’s THE BEST mark against Tennessee this year!
- Ugh, it sucks: but really it only sucks because we had to watch Tennessee shoot like that against our team. Missouri still played well, and if they play like that every game the rest of the way out they’re going to win a LOT of games.
Player Stats
Your Trifecta: Tony Perkins, Tamar Bates, Caleb Grill
On the season: Tamar Bates 30, Mark Mitchell 26, Caleb Grill 20, Anthony Robinson II 17, Tony Perkins 14, Trent Pierce 11, Marques Warrick 9, Jacob Crews 2, Josh Gray, Marcus Allen 1, Aidan Shaw 1
On the ‘hey good news’ side of things, Tony Perkins continues to play better and better. And with good timing since Anthony Robinson has been plagued by foul calls. But Perk kickstarted the scoring with a three, and chipped in 11 of the first 13 points. For much of the rest of the game Perkins deferred his offense, well maybe he shouldn’t have. No turnovers, 7 field goal attempts, and his usual rebounding and assist work.
Tamar Bates was mostly great. The two misses on the front end of one-and-ones stick out, but he made four threes on 10 attempts and two of four 2FGA. Doing all that while being at the top of the scouting report is a good sign. Mostly because the Vols were able to limit Caleb Grill’s looks, something not many teams have been able to do.
Missouri also got nice minutes from Marques Warrick, who forced UT to shift their defense and make HIM a priority.
Mizzou was really very good offensively. Bates was good, Perkins was good, Warrick was good, Barrett was good, Marshall was good, Grill was good, and Crews was good. Tennessee’s front court can be imposing, so it wasn’t a surprise that Josh Gray and Mark Mitchell struggled. You’d like to see them not struggle so much, but the Tigers still were able to score the basketball.
Three point variance is a helluva thing. On the season Tennessee shoots 34%. In conference play they shoot 32%. They shot 47.6% against Vanderbilt in a loss, which was their best shooting night of conference play. They did make 10 of 19 against Louisville in November.
Meanwhile Mizzou had the second best performance from the three point line for an opponent, behind only Kentucky who shot 50% on 24 attempts.
Tennessee has 8 games this year above 40%, Missouri has 11 such games. They’re 38% on the year, and 39.9% in conference play. So 40% is within reason for the Tigers, it’s quite literally their average performance. The Vols, meanwhile, had their best shooting performance of the year at 66.7%. And it wasn’t particularly close. Under Rick Barnes, Tennessee has only had one better three point shooting night, oddly enough it was against Missouri in December 2020 when they attempted 7 and made 5 threes in a blowout at Mizzou Arena. So they’ve never had a better of a shooting night when they’ve had any real volume of attempts.
So yes, it’s an outlier. It just sucks it happened when you played really well and would have won if things were a bit more equal.
Oh well. Go beat the hell out of Texas A&M.
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.