We all know how disappointing last season was, and it seems at this stage that Dennis Gates popularity amongst Mizzou fans is hardly the worse for the wear afterwards. Fan atitudes, overall, still seem to be pretty high on Gates. Especially after the exciting spring he’s had.
So as we walk into the summer practice season, it’s a good time to take stock of where things were and were they need to go to erase last season from our memories completely.
I made a pretty unconvincing “argument” a little too early that Mizzou wasn’t a bad team... even if my overall point required a bit more context there, I stand by the premise. Like many teams in College Basketball, in particularly these days, there’s a big meaty middle where a whole lot of teams are hovering right around mediocre. Mizzou was on the most bottom side of that equation, but they weren’t as far off the middle as we might think.
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There were three great teams this past season, UConn, Purdue, and Houston. All three had an Adjusted Efficiency Margin (per kenpom.com ) over 30. Or, over the course of 100 possessions they would be 30 points better than the median Division 1 basketball team. Roughly, Utah Valley. The 162nd ranked team. UVU had a -0.10 efficiency margin, the closest team to 0.
So lets walk this back a bit.
There is a 10 point difference between UConn, the top ranked team, and Tennessee, the 5th ranked team (AdjEM +26.61). The next 10 points cover 33 teams dropping all the way to 38th with Indiana State (AdjEM +16.69). The next 10 points drops all the way to 104th, with Vermont (AdjEM +6.61). Then just six and a half points get you to median.
The long way around this is to say going from Tennessee, an Elite 8 squad and 5th best team in KenPom, to Missouri last year was an efficiency margin of 24.82. Over 100 possessions, or a difference of 0.248 point per possession. Over a 68 possession game that’s a 16.8 point loss.
There’s your margin. 17 points. That’s the difference between a jump from #145 to #5. We don’t need Mizzou to be the 5th best team (although I’d take that!), we just need a tournament team. Let’s pick 35th. Solidly in the NCAA Tournament for a major conference team. Texas A&M finished 35th with an adjusted efficiency margin of 17.02, a difference of 15.23 over 100 possessions, or 0.1523 ppp. Over a 68 possession game that’s a 10.35 difference.
So now you’re looking at shaving 0.1523 points per possession to go from being a last place team to being a tournament team. Or 0.076 on offense, and 0.076 on defense. That’s a 50/50 split, and it’s unlikely the Tigers will even off their offensive improvement equally with defensive improvment.
So how can they get there? Let’s take a look at the defensive side of the ball first.
Improving Defensive Efficiency
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25492143/usa_today_22770207.jpg "Pourover: How do you get back onto the right side of the bubble? Trim at the margins (2)")
This is easy to do! Just get better defenders, right?
Well, sure. Not to denigrate the efforts of anyone off the past two rosters, but a backcourt tandem of Sean East and Nick Honor hardly instilled fear into the Missouri opponents.
Last season Missouri was 181st in defensive efficiency at 106.6 AdjustedD. The KenPom.com numbers are adjusted for opponent, so this is saying Mizzou would give up 1.066 points per possession to the median D1 basketball team. Iowa State had the countries best defensive efficiency at 87.5, and 61 basketball teams had a defensive efficiency under 100. That number included just four SEC basketball teams: Tennessee, Auburn, Mississippi State, and Georgia.
Mizzou was bad in 3 areas, giving up free throws, effective field goal shooting, and offensive reboundss. They ranked 340th in free throw rate, 234th in eFG%, and 358th in defensive rebound rate.
In 32 games they averaged 68.7 possessions per game, multiplied by their total of 32 games and you get 2,198.4. Rounding to 2,198. They gave up 2,438 points for a raw Defensive Efficiency of 1.109.
So these are the numbers we’re working with, how many points from 2,438 over the course of 2,198 possessions can you shave off?
Matt Harris is working on a piece for later about the defensive havoc, which should go right into part of how Mizzou can improve defensively. But that piece was focusing on what they did well. This is about what they didn’t. As a primer though, in 2023 Mizzou was 6th in the country in Turnover Rate at 24%. Last season that dropped to 18.6%, which was 76th in the country.
They still didnt’ defend well, but now they weren’t generating turnovers either. Peeking at the roster now it’s safe to assume will at least be decent at forcing turnovers. Forced turnovers accumulated for 409 possessions last year, which takes the total possessions down to 1,794. Basically when opponents didn’t turn the ball over, they scored 1.36 points per possession.
Starting with offensive rebounds, Mizzou allowed 388 last year for an ORB Rate of 35.7%. The median for division one is 29% or around 315 playing at Mizzou’s pace. That’s 73 extra possessions gained by the offense. Even keeping with the relatively high rate of 1.36 ppp, if Mizzou eliminated 73 offensive rebounds they would have shaved 99.2 points off their total, rounding down to 99 means they’re at 2,339 points.
2,339 / 2,198 = 1.064.
You’ve shaved 0.045 points per possession off, or over half of where you needed to get to to be a tournament team.
Next is free throws. I’m not going to talk about free throw makes as much as free throw rate, because there’s not much you can do about free throw defense other than try not to foul 90% shooters as much, and foul 50% shooters more. But Mizzou sent their opponent to the line 771 times last year, and lost 571 points in the process. Opponents shot 74.1% which isn’t bad. But Mizzou only shot 583 free throws. To be average, Mizzou would have given up 633 free throws, at a 74.1% rate would have been 469 makes. That’s another 102 points.
So just being D1 average in defensive rebounding and free throw rates would have subtracted 201 points, or 2,237 points total.
2,237 / 2,198 = 1.017.
That’s 0.092 points per possesion, which is greater than the 0.076 I mentioned above. All by just being not terrible at these things, and instead being merely mediocre.
How do you get there?
I’m not going to draw a map here for fans or Mizzou, but merely point to the margins.
99 fewer points or 73 fewer offensive rebounds means less than 3.1 points per game and less than 2.3 offensive rebounds per game! That’s it! Securing three defensive rebounds more per game last season takes Mizzou’s defensive rebounding from amongst the worst in the nation, to adequate.
The free throw thing is also made less complicated if you’re not playing from behind at the ends of close basketball games (sound familiar). But going from 771 free throws to to 583 free throws is 188, or less than 6 per game (5.875). That’s three-four fouls per game.
Get three more defensive rebounds, foul four fewer times, and suddenly you’ve shaved basically a tenth of a point per possession on defense, all while not really changing how your opponent shoots. Going from 1.11 ppp to 1.02, without an opponent adjustment is top 100 level at minimum. LSU was 102.2 adjusted and 99th in the country. Fixing free throw rate and fixing defensive rebounding likely puts a Mizzou defense in the top 60-75 range defensively after the adjustment for opponent.
It’s all just trimming and cleaning up around the margins.
Next, let’s talk about offense. But that’s for another time.
