A lot has happened in the week since my last column. Mizzou won a game it probably should’ve lost, lost a game it definitely should have won and made a big comeback in a game it should’ve never trailed. One thing’s for certain: the Tigers haven’t looked quite right. Not for a full 40 minutes yet at least. They’re either lighting the world on fire or looking completely extinguished. The team from the first half of the Memphis game and the second half of the South Carolina State game looks like an NCAA tournament squad. The team from everything between those two periods looks like a group that would struggle to reach the NIT.
The offense has been significantly worse, the defense has been better but not good enough and Missouri just doesn’t seem to have the same kind of looseness it played with a year ago. I wrote about how badly turnovers are hurting the Tigers and Gabe wrote about how Dennis Gates’ near-constant subbing frequency has prevented the team from finding any kind of rhythm. It all looked better against the Bulldogs, but after the loss to Jackson State and the slow start on Wednesday, they need to prove they can be consistent before receiving the benefit of the doubt.
I wanted to dig into a few other red flags I’ve noticed, specifically looking at lineup and shot chart data now five games in provided by CBB Analytics (the numbers I’m using will be from before the SC State game — I wasn’t certain they’d be updated by the time the column runs). The stats obviously aren’t going to be based on a huge sample size, but I do think it’s a big enough sample to draw some observations from.
Here are three things that haven’t been working out for Mizzou so far:
The Nick Honor and Sean East II backcourt pairing
I remember my ears perking up after Mizzou Madness when Gates first said he wanted to play the two guards together more. I didn’t quite understand it then. He’d brought in multiple transfer guards and seemed to basically already make his mind up that at least two of them were going to come off the bench. It meant that Anthony Robinson II was going to play more than I initially anticipated. And I don’t remember Honor/East pairing necessarily blowing teams away last season — I double-checked what the numbers looked like afterward and they pretty much confirmed what I saw.
Gates said that he was making the decision because he liked what he saw from the duo when reviewing film from last year. So at SEC Media Days, I asked him what he was seeing on film that wasn’t necessarily showing up in the stats.
“When you look at the numbers, I think sometimes you look at that and you don't look at the growth,” Gates said. “Nick Honor is a better player, Sean East is a better player than what they were last year. I think when you look at the pieces of the puzzle that was on the court with them, they're all different and they're all unique. But I think ultimately when you have two experienced guards like them on your team, you gotta find out ways to continue to play them. Nick Honor averaged close to 30 minutes, Sean East averaged close to 24, they played 14 of those minutes together. And when you play 14 minutes over a 40-minute game with two guys, I mean, that's essentially some good minutes that they played. So I'm excited about where they are.”
Gates has stayed true to his word, playing lineups with Honor and East together for more minutes than lineups than just one or the other on the court combined. But the results have largely remained the same, with the Tigers being much more effective when the guards are separated. It hasn’t been close.
The numbers look even worse when Gates adds Robinson into the mix with the pair of graduate seniors. Robinson has been a pleasant surprise for the team, making the most of his chances every time he comes off the bench, but it hasn’t always been smooth sailing when he’s played next to the upperclassmen. In 14 minutes of playing time, the trio has been outscored by 9.3 points per 100 possessions.
It’s understandable that the head coach wanted to play his most experienced veterans on the court as much as possible. But as some of the newcomers begin to earn more trust with him, it might not be a bad idea to eventually split Honor and East up.
Noah Carter as a small-ball 5
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