Flexibility defines Mizzou’s rotation as non-con action winds down

Dec 17, 2024 | Uncategorized

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NCAA Basketball: Kansas at Missouri
Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images

Coach Dennis Gates hasn’t settled on a clutch of lineups, but the depth at his disposal offers the Tigers multiple routes to a potential at-large bid in March.

On Sunday, Missouri breezed to a matinee romp over LIU behind shooters bombing away in small-ball lineups and using a healthy dose of zone defense to create efficient havoc.

It was a professional way to end a six-day layoff after toppling then-No. 1 Kansas, a Border War upset rooted in traditional bigs leaning on Hunter Dickinson and swarming him at the elbow. And the guards made sure the Jayhawks felt them at the other end, seeking contact on downhill rim attacks launched from a bevy of ball screens.

Neither scenario is inherently contradictory.

Unlike last season, there’s no reason to fret about a budding identity crisis. Instead, the Tigers’ opening 10 games reflect a roster that boasts legitimate depth – enough that a nagging injury to Tony Perkins or Caleb Grill’s recent absence hasn’t kept MU from climbing into the top 30 of the NET rankings.

A plethora of options is a boon for a tinkerer like coach Dennis Gates, whose team ranks third in Division I for bench minutes. Three seasons into his tenure, he obviously treats buy games like engineers treat a crash lab. Sure, Gates might settle on a starting five, but he’ll inevitably stress-test a slew of combinations. Pay close enough attention, too, and you can see how subtle schematic tweaks add up.

Do those experiments unfold flawlessly?

No. Shooting variance resulted in a slight underperformance against Howard. Several days later, a lack of defensive focus upped the risk in a win over Eastern Washington. And the night before Thanksgiving, it produced some slipshod ball-handling as the Tigers muddled through against Lindenwood.

However, one variable hasn’t changed since last season: Gates hasn’t zeroed in on a handful of trusted lineups. In fact, his most-used quintet didn’t share the floor until it started the game against KU. Meanwhile, his second-most-used group only played 4.8 percent of the minutes in this campaign.

As you can see in the chart below, which also shows efficiency metrics, it’s sporadic for any of the 189 lineups used this season to log more than 10 possessions of action together.

Tracing how these lineups accrued seat time further underscores just how circumstantial the substitution pattern can be.

Again, the top group had not logged a minute together until Border War, finishing with a plus-10 scoring margin over 18 minutes. Yet against LIU, a sub-330 team in KenPom, it slogged to a minus-4 effort in barely eight minutes.

The second group in the table was Gates’ starting lineup for five consecutive games. Yet it would never see the floor after the opening three or four minutes. The No. 3 lineup saw heavy duty at Memphis but scant playing time together in buy games. The fourth lineup, which swaps Tony Perkins for Anthony Robinson, also logged the bulk of its PT during the season opener in the Bluff City.

During the offseason, we pitched the potential of Perkins, Robinson, Tamar Bates, Mark Mitchell and Aidan Shaw as a disruptive small-ball outfit. Defensively, it’s held up that end of the bargain, allowing 82.4 points per 100 possessions, but has lacked any offensive pop when Gates has fed it a minute or two over the past month.

As for some of the lineups with gaudier efficiency metrics, those were cultivated when MU feasted appetizers out of the SWAC. For example, the combination of Shaw, Marcus Allen, Marques Warrick and Annor Boateng used a 17-2 run during the latter stages of garbage time against Mississippi Valley State to post a 137.5 adjusted efficiency margin.

So, how does Gates manage his rotation?

Well, there’s a very loose script. Before the first media timeout, Shaw trots to the scorer’s table as a small-ball five. Shortly after that, Warrick enters to play combo guard. When MU reaches the under-12 timeout, Gates lifts Bates and Mitchell for a breather. Lastly, the four minutes between under-12 and under-8 breaks are where lineups can get funky.

Trust me, it’s easy to get lost in the dense undergrowth of MU’s lineup data. Instead, the better vantage point is to review how Gates allocates minutes individually. The table below shows each Tiger’s dosage of minutes, their Bayesian Performance Rating, and MU’s efficiency adjusted efficiency when that player is in the game.

Upon close inspection, there aren’t many surprises that jump off the screen.

We expected Mitchell and Bates to be lodestars. When Perkins has been healthy, his per-game minutes are in the same ballpark. We can also say the same for Caleb Grill. Now, I don’t think many people had Robinson pegged for the kind of breakout we’ve seen over the first seven weeks – even those of us who bought stock this summer.

The genuine intrigue starts once we start parsing the Tigers’ reserve corps. For example, Matt Watkins’ preseason forecast had Shaw parked in the 13th spot of the rotation. So far, the junior outpaces that projection. Whether he keeps it up, however, is worth monitoring.

When MU faces overmatched mid- and low-majors, it hasn’t hesitated to shrink its lineups. But against Memphis, Cal and Kansas, Gates has used a traditional center for roughly 86 percent of minutes in the post, and Shaw spent more of his time backing up Mitchell at the four-spot. Will that trend continue once SEC play arrives in a couple of weeks? Should it, Shaw might slip a few rungs down the ladder.

Reverting to a more traditional lineup also puts a potential squeeze on other rotation members.

When Shaw shifts back to the hybrid spot, it soaks up some minutes Gates has dispensed to Marcus Allen. The staff might also cut the Miami native’s dosage if it deploys Trent Pierce or Jacob Crews at the four-spot, a potential downstream consequence of Grill eventually taking his minutes back on the wing.

Crass as it sounds, four players – Allen, Crews, Pierce, and Boateng – might find themselves jockeying for three spots in the rotation. Currently, Pierce boasts a better net rating than Crews or Boateng, and MU’s net rating improves by 5.6 points per 100 possessions when he’s on the floor. It’s not hard to envision a scenario where – if nothing changes – Boateng and Crews are scrapping for the same PT.

Unsurprisingly, MU’s freshmen find themselves biding time. None average more than 11 minutes per game, and three of them — Boateng, Marshall, and T.O. Barrett – occupy the final slots in MU’s rotation. Meanwhile, now is about the time when Gates begins paring back his usage of youngsters.

However, going small turns a safety valve that eases some of that strain. We just don’t know how frequently the Tigers will do it during conference action.

Mind you, these issues are modest compared to what Gates confronted last season. By late November, necessity forced him to use Robinson, Jordan Butler and Jesus Carralero Martin more than some might have expected. MU didn’t assemble a roster with a youth movement planned. Still, a foot injury decommissioned John Tonje, while Connor Vanover missed three games as punishment for participating in the Portsmouth Invitational. Then, Grill broke his wrist against Wichita State.

For now, the Tigers’ injury luck remains tolerable, assuming Grill, who injured his neck against Lindenwood, starts a return-to-play protocol. The chart below reflects each Tiger’s efficiency and shows room to improve over the next three outings.

Throughout non-con, we’ve noticed that Mitchell’s struggled at times with contested finishes at the rim. By contrast, Crews has only canned 7 of 26 catch-and-shoot 3s this season, looks that make up the dominant share of his shot portfolio. Maybe going 2 of 5 against LIU is an early sign of an upturn.

Then there’s Tony Perkins. It’s hard not to notice the Iowa transfer’s minus-5.4 net rating. Or that MU’s efficiency craters by 48.8 points per 100 possessions when he’s on the floor. Those are problems, no? As always, context helps. Reviewing Perkins’ play-type data underscores why MU held him out of action against MVSU and Pacific: it gave a nagging lower leg injury 16 days to heal.

Over the past five games, Perkins’ efficiency has aligned with our expectations. What comes next is ramping up the involvement of the grad transfer. Since rejoining the lineup, his playing time (51.4 %MIN) and usage rate (19.3%) reflect a depth piece. That’s well below the 25 percent usage Watkins forecasted earlier this fall.

Now, this doesn’t resolve whether Perkins will find another gear as an on-ball creator. Per Synergy Sports, he’s averaging 0.476 PPP as a scorer out of pick-and-rolls, which ranks in the 10th percentile nationally. Yet Perkins has lived up to his billing in transition (1.263 PPP), and like Crews, perhaps he dialed in his shooting stroke over the weekend.

That’s very different than asking whether Noah Carter’s production has scaled up enough. Or if Nick Honor’s shot selection shows a rotation buckling. Or whether Shaw wants to shoot the ball at all. MU’s offense also displays some diversity – not simply hoping Sean East II can flatten out a defense. Conversely, the Tigers’ are forcing the kind of efficient havoc we hinted might be possible.

The scale of these problems doesn’t approach what MU had to weigh up last season. Gates occupies an ideal spot for now – maximum flexibility with his personnel and tolerable tradeoffs to optimize it. Sorting out his options hasn’t come at the expense of results, either. As of Monday night, the Tigers’ team sheet is healthy enough that (very early) projections place them on the right side of the bubble.

Maybe we don’t precisely know the nature of this team, but every route remains open to it.

There are worse places to be as non-conference winds to a close.

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