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Why do golf courses in Columbia, MO. have only 14 holes? Because in Missouri they never make it to the Final Four. Okay, that may be a bit tacky, but we are talking about Mizzou. If I were a Mizzou fan (oh my gosh, I can’t believe I just typed that) I would be pretty pleased with certain aspects of the game against the Jayhawks in Lawrence. They came to town and decided they were going to make a game of it, and they did. They couldn’t quite get over the hump and take the lead, but they did pull within 1 point on several occasions. You have to like our chances when they did their worst damage on off-balance treys. Lightning can strike, but I just had they feeling they were going to run out of luck and gas and the treys were going to rim out. They did, and they did. It was a nail biter. I am not usually prone to overt criticism, but Aaron Miles played like a sophomore. A high school sophomore that is. He made some of the worst decisions since the Oregon game. He took quick shots, had some big concentration lapses leading to TOs, and his defense was not up to his own standards. And I just have two words for Jeff Graves: B L O C K O U T!!!!! I always knew where to find Jeff after a missed shot. Namely, somewhere other than where the ball was. We were outrebounded by 9 and grabbed only 43% of the rebounds. That is the 2nd worst rebounding performance this season next to Arizona. It was the worst outing on the offensive glass. We managed to grab only 20% of the offensive rebounds, by far the lowest of the year. Jeff Graves stats will not look that bad when you see them below but they do not show what he did not do. Opponent %OR %DR %TR UMKC 48.72 89.80 71.59 North Carolina 45.00 80.56 61.84 Emporia State 32.35 84.09 61.54 Central Missouri State 36.84 79.59 60.92 at Nebraska 45.83 75.56 60.22 UNC-Greensboro 50.00 67.44 59.04 Wyoming 38.46 83.33 58.44 at Tulsa 48.94 68.57 57.32 Nebraska 51.22 60.87 56.32 Holy Cross 35.90 76.32 55.84 Oregon 41.07 72.92 55.77 Florida 47.27 63.64 54.55 UNC-Asheville 29.63 70.00 53.73 at Iowa State 26.47 71.05 50.00 Kansas State 27.03 68.89 50.00 at Colorado 36.73 74.07 50.00 California 29.17 63.89 50.00 Texas 36.36 60.42 48.91 UCLA 26.32 56.60 43.96 Missouri 20.00 68.75 43.28 Arizona 29.73 58.06 42.65 This game was dichotomy. On the one hand we had solid if not superb performances by Nick and Kirk, solid minutes from Lee and Hawkins and adequate minutes from Nash. On the other Graves and Miles appeared to be sleepwalking and Langford was blah. I think we can thank Kirk for this game. He came up H U G E when we needed it most. He was offensively and defensively outstanding. This was not a game that will spawn much textbook performance video clips, but we did pull out an ugly win. Sometimes that can be a motivator. Player of the Game: Kirk Hinrich!! Clemons sank a bushel of treys, but he was just in a zone. Kirk played solid “D” on him. Down the stretch in the last 4 minutes it was the Kirk and Nick show with cameo appearances by Bryant Nash and Michael Lee. Kirk shut down Clemons, made a critical steal, and scored 7 huge points. NEP n-NEP NEP Rating SE Hinrich 48.09 50.62 48.97 75.00 Collison 32.35 36.97 33.96 55.00 Graves 17.39 31.63 22.38 50.00 Lee 17.17 24.52 19.74 53.85 Nash 12.36 22.48 15.90 46.67 Langford 12.78 15.49 13.73 40.00 Miles 2.30 4.85 3.11 22.22 Hawkins 1.66 22.15 2.24 0.00 Kirk’s NEP of 48.09 ranks as the second-best individual performance of the year. Only Nick’s outstanding game in Ames tops Kirk's performance against Mizzou. If you read my last ITN after the Nebraska game, you know I sort of threw the gauntlet down for Kirk in regards to him stepping up in big games. I guess he showed me. This was a huge game for him against a ranked team. Opponent Player NEP n-NEP NEP Rating SE Iowa State Collison 49.09 54.54 50.99 75.61 Missouri Hinrich 48.09 50.62 48.97 75.00 UNC-Greensboro Hinrich 45.71 67.72 53.42 57.50 Emporia State Hinrich 44.10 65.33 51.53 71.88 UMKC Hinrich 44.07 70.51 53.32 80.56 Texas Collison 42.36 47.07 44.01 50.00 Emporia State Miles 42.36 67.78 51.26 57.14 Central Missouri State Simien 39.92 61.41 47.44 91.67 Central Missouri State Langford 39.77 51.32 43.81 62.16 Nebraska Miles 39.43 50.88 43.43 43.75 One of the things we seem to see often are teams that jack up treys with reckless abandon. Is this a profitable strategy? Missouri attempted 28 three pointers. In the last 7 years there have been 42 teams attempt at least 25 treys against KU. Our record in those games is 38 and 4 or 90.5%. One of those was the Ball State game last year which could have (should have) been a victory. It would seem from these stats that shooting threes in large numbers is not necessarily productive against KU. Consequently, KU has lost 5 of 14 games in which the opponent shot 9 or fewer treys. Go figure. Season W/L Opponent 3FG 3FGA 2002 W Arizona 14 38 2003 W Emporia State 12 38 2002 W Nebraska 18 37 2001 W North Dakota 9 34 2002 W Seton Hall 13 33 2000 W Missouri 14 33 1999 W Oklahoma 7 32 2002 W Valparaiso 8 32 2003 L Florida 14 31 2001 W Cal. State-Northridge 13 30 1999 W Evansville 12 30 2002 L Ball State 13 30 1999 W Colorado 10 29 1998 W Southern California 9 29 2003 W Central Missouri State 10 29 2003 W Missouri 10 28 2001 L Oklahoma 8 28 1998 W Arizona 10 28 2002 W Missouri 10 28 2002 W Oregon 11 28 2001 W St. John's 7 27 2001 W Tulsa 11 27 2001 W Syracuse 5 27 1999 W Oklahoma State 5 27 1997 W Jackson State 12 27 2000 W Nebraska 9 27 2001 W Nebraska 12 27 2002 W Illinois 10 26 2002 W Princeton 8 26 2000 W Texas A&M 6 26 2001 L Illinois 6 26 2001 W DePaul 8 26 1997 W Texas 6 26 1997 W Missouri 6 26 1998 W Prarie View 5 25 2000 W Pennsylvania 8 25 1996 W Santa Clara 6 25 1997 W Niagara 9 25 1997 W Oklahoma 8 25 1997 W Baylor 4 25 2002 W Baylor 7 25 1998 W Oklahoma State 8 25 Significant Stats of the Game: Let’s recap. We shot 2 for 8 from three point land, we shot only 10 of 19 from the FT line, we were outrebounded by 9. So how in the heck did we win by 6? One big reason is we protected the ball. Anytime you have a %LoB (% Loss of ball) below 15% you have done well. We have only done that 8 times this season. A related stat is the A/TO ratio which was 2.09 for the second best performance of the season. You can see we also shot 55.2% for the 4th best shooting mark of the season. We also had the 5th best FGA/Poss of the year. That means we were at least getting shots off. Opponent %LoB FGA /Poss FG% PPP A/TO UNC-Asheville 8.54 0.84 62.32 1.24 4.57 UNC-Greensboro 11.22 0.72 54.93 1.07 1.91 Texas 12.90 0.73 47.06 0.97 1.42 at Colorado 13.10 0.80 32.84 0.70 1.09 UCLA 13.41 0.71 51.72 1.06 2.00 Emporia State 13.68 0.73 62.32 1.19 2.00 Missouri 14.10 0.74 55.17 0.97 2.09 Nebraska 14.89 0.73 46.38 0.98 1.36 Kansas State 15.12 0.71 49.18 0.94 1.08 at Tulsa 15.46 0.67 47.69 0.92 1.07 at Nebraska 16.13 0.77 43.06 0.87 1.27 Central Missouri State 16.16 0.70 53.62 0.98 1.31 UMKC 16.85 0.76 54.41 1.12 1.53 Florida 18.37 0.65 37.50 0.74 0.83 Wyoming 18.56 0.71 52.17 1.01 1.00 at Iowa State 18.60 0.72 50.00 0.97 0.75 Arizona 19.10 0.73 47.69 0.83 1.12 Oregon 20.75 0.64 39.71 0.74 0.41 Holy Cross 21.59 0.60 52.83 0.92 0.63 California 24.00 0.65 63.27 1.07 1.22 North Carolina 26.83 0.66 40.74 0.68 0.50 Another huge stat was the 14 steals and 20 TOs by Mizzou and their A/TO of 0.50. Either our defense was very good or their execution was bad. You decide. Actually their PPP was 0.833 which is not that bad. This is due mostly to their numerous three point shooting. When you shoot that many three pointers you will not typically get many assists. Highlighted Topic One issue that has always irritated me is the proclivity of fans to extol the performance of players who have big scoring nights. In fact, this issue was a big motivator for the development of the NEP. The Missouri game provided some good case studies for this topic. Clemons and Paulding scored 19 and 17 points respectively. Those are solid scoring numbers in any circumstances. Yet, when you look at their overall box score, their performances were not so stellar. Between them they had two assists to 12 TOs. They also shot a combined 12 for 31 overall, which is less than 40% and 7 for 23 from the arc, which is 30.4%. When you add it all up and calculate the NEP, their performances don’t look nearly so swell. One way to measure the non-scoring contribution is to look at the NEP/Pts ratio. Since each point is worth 1 NEP a ratio of less than 1 means the player did more harm than good aside from his scoring. Of the 47 opponents who have scored more than 10 points in a game against KU this season only 16 (34%) have NEP/Pts of less than 1.0. Paulding and Clemons were both below 1.0. In fact Clemons scored 19 points but has the worst NEP/Pts ratio of any opponent this season. Take a look at the 11 worst performances in terms of NEP/pts. You can ignore Stoudamire and Kragel because even though they did little other than score they scored a bunch and ended up with very good NEP numbers. Clemons in particular did just about as much to lose the game as he did to win despite scoring a team high 19 points. Opponent Player NEP n-NEP NEP Rating Pts NEP/ Pts Missouri Clemons 8.10 8.31 8.18 19 0.43 Central Missouri State Haynes 11.02 16.95 13.09 17 0.65 Emporia State Ballard 9.12 11.05 9.79 14 0.65 Kansas State DeJesus 10.11 12.64 10.99 15 0.67 Arizona Stoudamire 23.43 26.03 24.34 32 0.73 Nebraska Johnson 9.26 10.01 9.53 12 0.77 North Carolina Williams 11.67 15.06 12.86 15 0.78 Holy Cross Wilson 9.46 11.13 10.05 12 0.79 UNC-Asheville Kragel 25.57 36.53 29.40 31 0.82 UCLA Patterson 10.34 20.68 13.96 12 0.86 Missouri Paulding 14.98 19.97 16.73 17 0.88

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Stats all for now, folks.