This game is going to tell us a lot about ourselves. We're coming off our worst game in a while, the crowd will not be as big or as juiced, and this is an opponent that will be more than happy to beat us if we aren't locked in.
Their season:
- Hard to find a team more bubbly than Mizzou. Want some good wins? We got that. How about a road win over Kentucky and home wins over Florida and Auburn. Want some head scratching losses? Dropped a non-con game to Notre Dame and they have a road loss to LSU and narrowly avoided a devastating home loss to Oklahoma in overtime. They've also been absolutely nuked a few times by Kansas, Alabama, and especially by Illinois.
- They have quite the stretch of games starting with this one, which can cut both ways. If they get hot, there's some opportunities here to really jump up the seed line. If not, they could get absolutely buried.
- This is the kind of sneaky good offensive rebounding team I kinda worry about. It's one thing when you're playing a known elite team like Florida or Tennessee, everyone is locked in on rebounding, but Mizzou has an offensive rebounding percentage over 36% as well. Though they haven't been overly good at it against good teams.
- They are a very good two point shooting team and will get to the basket a lot. They have one of the lower three point rates you'll see of a potential NCAA Tournament caliber team.
- Missouri also absolutely sucks at free throws, which means at Reed they'll shoot at least 80%.
Individual notes:
- Mizzou has two high-rate-high-quality shooters in the 6-8 Jacob Crews (47%!) and 6-4 Jayden Stone (41%).
- This is another tall team, but not in the same way that Florida was. They're a little bit like our 2016 team where there's one or two truly tall guys you have to worry about at any given time, but their size is really in their across-the-board length. The shortest guy they'll put on the floor is 6-3.
- Unlike Florida also they don't have any one guy that's just overwhelmingly good on the offensive boards, though Jevon Porter is good at it.
- Our help defense is going to have to be pretty locked in because both Mark Mitchell and Shawn Phillips are dunk threats at basically any time. These two are going to be a situation where we need to use our fouls strategically at times. Phillips is an absolutely terrible FT shooter and Mitchell isn't a very good one, but we also don't need to give them free bonus points by fouling on lost causes. Vinson and Federiko are both pretty bad about doing this. They need to learn from Marcus Hill and if you're going to foul, foul early in the shot attempt and make sure they don't make it.
Stray thoughts
- If Florida was our nightmare matchup, we (and Alabama) might be Missouri's. Florida is #335 in defensive three point rate, meaning their opponents shoot an absolute ton of threes. Problem for Missouri is they also make a ton, they're also #274 in defensive three point percentage. They are among the nation's best at defending 2's, but they will foul a lot.
- Mizzou does not particularly like to play at tempo, and teams haven't been particularly good at forcing them to. They've only played two non-OT conference games with more than 70 possessions, with one of them being their blowout loss to Alabama. The other a win over Mississippi State.
- To me this is a game that looks good for us on paper and I expect we'll be pretty big (8-9 point) favorites. We need to shake off the last game, come out and fire away with confidence, stress their guards, and I think we can win this one fairly easily and get back on track for a big-but-winnable game against Vandy this weekend.
Their season:
- Hard to find a team more bubbly than Mizzou. Want some good wins? We got that. How about a road win over Kentucky and home wins over Florida and Auburn. Want some head scratching losses? Dropped a non-con game to Notre Dame and they have a road loss to LSU and narrowly avoided a devastating home loss to Oklahoma in overtime. They've also been absolutely nuked a few times by Kansas, Alabama, and especially by Illinois.
- They have quite the stretch of games starting with this one, which can cut both ways. If they get hot, there's some opportunities here to really jump up the seed line. If not, they could get absolutely buried.
- This is the kind of sneaky good offensive rebounding team I kinda worry about. It's one thing when you're playing a known elite team like Florida or Tennessee, everyone is locked in on rebounding, but Mizzou has an offensive rebounding percentage over 36% as well. Though they haven't been overly good at it against good teams.
- They are a very good two point shooting team and will get to the basket a lot. They have one of the lower three point rates you'll see of a potential NCAA Tournament caliber team.
- Missouri also absolutely sucks at free throws, which means at Reed they'll shoot at least 80%.
Individual notes:
- Mizzou has two high-rate-high-quality shooters in the 6-8 Jacob Crews (47%!) and 6-4 Jayden Stone (41%).
- This is another tall team, but not in the same way that Florida was. They're a little bit like our 2016 team where there's one or two truly tall guys you have to worry about at any given time, but their size is really in their across-the-board length. The shortest guy they'll put on the floor is 6-3.
- Unlike Florida also they don't have any one guy that's just overwhelmingly good on the offensive boards, though Jevon Porter is good at it.
- Our help defense is going to have to be pretty locked in because both Mark Mitchell and Shawn Phillips are dunk threats at basically any time. These two are going to be a situation where we need to use our fouls strategically at times. Phillips is an absolutely terrible FT shooter and Mitchell isn't a very good one, but we also don't need to give them free bonus points by fouling on lost causes. Vinson and Federiko are both pretty bad about doing this. They need to learn from Marcus Hill and if you're going to foul, foul early in the shot attempt and make sure they don't make it.
Stray thoughts
- If Florida was our nightmare matchup, we (and Alabama) might be Missouri's. Florida is #335 in defensive three point rate, meaning their opponents shoot an absolute ton of threes. Problem for Missouri is they also make a ton, they're also #274 in defensive three point percentage. They are among the nation's best at defending 2's, but they will foul a lot.
- Mizzou does not particularly like to play at tempo, and teams haven't been particularly good at forcing them to. They've only played two non-OT conference games with more than 70 possessions, with one of them being their blowout loss to Alabama. The other a win over Mississippi State.
- To me this is a game that looks good for us on paper and I expect we'll be pretty big (8-9 point) favorites. We need to shake off the last game, come out and fire away with confidence, stress their guards, and I think we can win this one fairly easily and get back on track for a big-but-winnable game against Vandy this weekend.
