2020 Macadoodle's Mailbag: 8th Edition

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GD: Here's the thing: It's not all of college basketball. It's mostly the SEC. I dove into the numbers on Monday. SEC games feature a foul per team per game more than any other major conference. There are 350 Division One teams. The SEC has two of the 12 who commit the most fouls per game (Missouri and South Carolina). It has four teams ranked in the bottom 50 and a stunning ten teams ranked below 200. This league is full of hackers.

Now, let me be clear: Officials make bad calls too. Plenty of them. But there is no such thing as "SEC officials." Conferences don't have officials. So these guys are also calling games in other leagues and they're calling fewer fouls. The Big 12 features 3.1 fewer fouls per team, which means there are six fewer fouls in every single game. That's significant. So, yes, the officiating is terrible. But there are teams out there who can get through 40 minutes without sending an opponent to the free throw line 95 times. Unfortunately, Missouri doesn't seem to be one of them. While it would be great to lay the blame solely on the officials, it would also be dishonest. When it happens almost every game, at some point, you've got to look in the mirror and say "You know what? Maybe I foul too much." Missouri's opponents are scoring 27.2% of their points via free throws. That is the second highest percentage in the country (for what it's worth, South Carolina is first in that category at 29.1%). It can't be as simple as just getting screwed by the refs every single game.

As far as how you change it, I don't know. You have to change the way it's called because I don't think you can change the way players play.

GD: First off, let me say that I don't know the answer to your question. I have no idea where most people who are at games are from. I assume Mizzou could figure that out but even if it did, I'm not sure that information would be shared with me. But it makes sense to me that most people are going to be from mid-Missouri. Basketball is different than football (#analysis). In football, you've only got six or seven games. They're all events. They're all on weekends. You can make a day of it. The game lasts close to four hours so you don't feel crazy spending four hours in the car. In hoops, you've got 20 home games. Most of them are against average or bad teams. At least half of them, and probably more, are played on weeknights. They only last two hours. They're all on TV. Can you make an argument someone should spend four hours in the car on Tuesday for a college basketball game? I can't. Especially for a mediocre team.

In the end, attendance comes down to three things:

1) When is the game? 8 p.m. weeknight games aren't gonna fill the stands. Mizzou had 11,000 against Arkansas, 12,000 against Auburn and then announced 8600 for Ole Miss but I'm pretty sure the actual number was maybe 3/4 of that.

2) Who are they playing? There aren't developed important rivalries in the SEC yet. Of the three best teams in the league, Auburn was the only one to visit CoMo this year. The non-conference schedule at home was a steaming pile this year.

3) How good are they? This is obviously the main factor. If you're winning, more people show up. The more people that show up, the more people they tell and bring with them. Missouri can't put 15,000 in the arena every night, but it can do it on the right nights and it can average 12 or 13 without a problem. But the team has to do its part. It hasn't for quite some time.

From 2008-13, Missouri was 85-4 in games played at Mizzou Arena. That's five seasons. The Tigers lost to Kansas twice, Kansas State once and Texas A&M once. They beat everyone else. Add in a 15-2 home slate in 2013-14 and that's 100-6 over six seasons. That's an average of 16 wins and one loss over six years at home.

In the six seasons since, Mizzou is 57-40 at home. That's an average of nearly seven losses per season...which is more than they lost in the six previous seasons total. Missouri is 11-3 at home this year. It is the fewest home games the Tigers have lost in a season since 2013-14 (there are two home games left; Missouri was 10-4 at home two years ago). There is no home court advantage. It's up to the team to give fans a reason to recreate one.

GD: Mizzou is guaranteed six more games. If the Tigers win three of them, they're sitting 16-16. The NIT isn't out of the question, but probably isn't likely. If you can get four more wins, you're 17-15 and the NIT seems like a pretty good possibility. Obviously, if you're winning in the conference tournament, you're adding to that number. Anything more than four wins will surely get Mizzou in the consolation tournament.

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