Tigers lead Texas at halftime

The Missouri women’s basketball team leads the No. 23-ranked Texas Longhorns 31-24 at halftime of the opening round of the Big 12 Tournament.

Alyssa Hollins leads the Tigers with 13 points. Earnesia Williams leads Texas with eight points.

The Tigers are the No. 11 seed in the tournament while Texas is the No. 6 seed.

Hollins named All-Big 12 Honorable Mention

Missouri senior guard Alyssa Hollins earned All-Big 12 Honorable Mention honors on Monday. 

Hollins averaged 13 points on 33 percent shooting for the season. Missouri’s all-time leader in made 3-pointers also only shot 27 percent from behind the arc this season. 

The fact that Hollins was able to even earn honorable mention honors despite these seemingly pedestrian statistics should tell you a lot about the reputation she’s earned in the Big 12 over the last four years. Hollins is a decent but unspectacular defender and rebounder and she fell into a shooting slump early in the season and never seemed to break out of it. 

But all season long she demanded constant attention from opposing defenses. Even when she was going three-for-17 defenses treated her like a lethal scoring threat. And even though Hollins 15 shot attempts per game she rarely took a shot that didn’t come within the flow of the offense. Unfortunately for her, she was just never able to find her rhythm in her final season for whatever reason. 

She also averaged 34.2 minutes per game this season (the only Missouri player to average more than 29 minutes) and was one of only two Tigers (Shakara Jones)to start every game.

I was somewhat surprised to see that sophomore guard RaeShara Brown didn’t make the Big 12 All-Defensive Team. She’s the Big 12 leader in steal with 2.69 per game and has regularly drawn opposing team’s top scorer. I would guess that she was a player that just missed the cut. Once again that just goes to show the overall strength of the conference.

Missouri women’s game changed

The scheduled start time of the Missouri women’s basketball team’s opening round game in the Big 12 Tournament against the Texas Longhorns has been changed to 5 pm on Thursday, March 12. The game was originally scheduled to tip at 7 pm but was moved so that no Big 12 teams will have both its men’s and women’s teams playing at the same time.

The Missouri men’s team is scheduled to play the winner of the Texas A&M-Texas Tech game at 8:30 pm on Thursday.

Tigers’ loss hurts Big 12 Tournament chances

The Missouri women’s basketball team’s 63-56 loss to Texas Tech yesterday afternoon had considerable ramifications involving the Tigers’ chances of advancing past the first day of the Big 12 Tournament. 

Had the Tigers defeated the Red Raiders they would have moved up to eighth place in the Big 12 Conference standings. That would have meant a first round game against a Nebraska Cornhuskers team (15-14, 6-10) that the Tigers beat earlier this season at Mizzou Arena. 

But instead the Tigers find themselves in eleventh place and will have an extremely difficult first round game against the No. 15-ranked Texas Longhorns. The Longhorns defeated the Tigers 66-56 in Columbia two weeks ago.

The Longhorns stifled Missouri in Columbia by utilizing a 2-3 zone defense that had the Tigers firing errant jumpers for most of the night. It’s not surprising that the Tigers struggled against a packed in zone. Missouri has the lowest field goal percentage in the Big 12 this season (38.7 percent).

If the Tigers hope to have any chance they are going to need senior Alyssa Hollins to shoot well above the 32 percent that she has shot from the field this season. Hollins is the Tigers’ best outside threat but she has struggled to handle the increased attention she has received from opposing defenses this season. 

Missouri and Texas will play at 7:30 pm on Thursday.

Cyclones defeat Tigers

The Missouri women’s basketball team fell to Iowa State 62-47.

Heather Ezell led the Cyclones with 17 points. Jessra Johnson was the Tigers’ leading scorer with 10 points.

The victory improves the Cyclones’ record to 22-7 and 10-5 in the Big 12. The Tigers fall to 13-15 and 4-11.

Iowa State leads Tigers at half

The No. 24-ranked Iowa State Cyclones lead the Missouri women’s basketball team 24-16 at halftime.

Amanda Nisleit leads the Cyclones with 10 points. Iowa State attempted 19 three-pointers in the first half while only hitting four.

Shakara Jones leads the Tigers with five points.

Final look at AGS’s

Last Wednesday I took a look at the average game scores for the Missouri women’s basketball team. Yesterday I posted the AGS’s for some of the Big 12’s top players.

You don’t have to be a stats wizard to make a few observations on what these numbers mean. The Tiger with the highest AGS was Jessra Johnson (10.5). That’s a solid number but what’s concerning is that the next highest is Shakara Jones (7.05). Alyssa Hollins, considered to be Missouri’s best player and the team’s leader, has a pedestrian AGS of 5.92. And eight players have AGS’s below 3.0. In layman’s terms: That’s not good.*

*These numbers were figured last week so have obviously moved up and down a bit in the last week but not enough to provide a huge discrepancy in the numbers.

The biggest thing holding the Tigers back has been their offense. At times, their defense has been pretty solid, although they rank seventh in the Big 12 in scoring defense (59.7 ppg). But their offense has been horrendous. They’re currently the lowest scoring team in the conference with only 61.2 points per game.

They’re also in dead last in team field goal percentage (38.3 percent) and 10th in field goal percentage defense (40.1 percent). That’s obviously very poor efficiency, which factors heavily into the AGS formula.

So what we can finally conclude after examining the numbers is something most of us already knew: While this team is certainly better than last year, it’s still not very good.

Big 12 Game Scores

As promised last week, here are the average game scores for five of the bigger name players in the Big 12 Conference. 

AGS

Courtney Paris, Oklahoma 17.53

Danielle McCray, Kansas 12.65

Brittany Spears, Colorado 12.47

Shalee Lehning, Kansas State 11.61

Andrea Riley, Oklahoma State 11.11

By the end of the week I will try to compare these statistics to the ones I came up with for Missouri’s players and attempt to provide some sort of analysis on what it all means.

Stein on why this weekend will be different from last weekend

After the Missouri women’s basketball team’s practice today I was talking to coach Cindy Stein about the difficulty her team is experiencing in trying to win on the road. You can read more about that here, but there was something I left out of my story that I thought was interesting.

I compared the situation the Tigers are in this week to the one they were in last week. Last week the Tigers were coming off a big win against Kansas in their previous game and preparing to travel to Baylor where they suffered their biggest loss of the year 72-43.

This week the Tigers are coming off another big win against No. 16-ranked Kansas State and are again set to hit the road to play Nebraska. I asked Stein what she thought her team learned from their letdown the previous weekend.

“I think the letdown had more to do with having a week off,” Stein said. “It’s hard to have a week off because you are in such a structure of going going going. And it’s hard, I’ve talked to a lot of coaches and that week off, a lot of people think it’s great that aren’t coaches or players. Your team needs it from a rest standpoint but we don’t need it from a rhythm standpoint. Because you see a lot of teams get out of rhythm with it. So it’s really hard to know exactly what to do with it.”

Tigers upset Wildcats

The Missouri women’s basketball team defeated No. 16-ranked Kansas State 52-43. Jessra Johnson led the Tigers with 17 points. She also grabbed nine rebounds and blocked six shots. Alyssa Hollins added 12 points.

Check the ColumbiaMissourian.com later for more on the game.

Tigers lead Wildcats at half

The Missouri women’s basketball team leads No. 16-ranked Kansas State 26-20 at halftime.

The Wildcats jumped out to a quick 8-0 lead but failed to make a field goal in the final 12:21. 

Alyssa Hollins and Shakara Jones led the Tigers with seven points apiece. Jalana Childs has a game-high eight points.

The Wildcats are without their star point guard, senior Shalee Lening who is out with mononucleosis.

Mills out of lineup for K-State

Redshirt freshman point guard Bekah Mills is not dressed out for tonight’s game against Kansas State. Mills injured her knee in the Tigers’ last game against Baylor.

A statistical analysis of MU women’s basketball

I’ve always been a huge basketball fan. It was my favorite sport to play growing up, has always been my favorite sport to watch and has been my favorite sport that I’ve covered. That said, I have to admit that I’m kind of a dork when it comes to basketball statistics. I hate math but I love breaking down numbers when they’re listed in a basketball box score.

I think all statistics should be taken with a grain of salt. There are some things in sports—particularly in basketball—that can’t be measured by any stat. Most numbers don’t measure a player making a pass that leads to a pass that leads to a basket. Most numbers don’t tell how a player is going to perform when their team is down two points in the final minutes and playing in front of thousands of screaming fans.

But one of my favorite stats that I think does a much better job of revealing a player’s true value than any stat found in most box scores is a player’s game score. The game score was created by ESPN’s John Hollinger and measures a player’s overall productivity. Here’s the formula to calculate a game score: PTS + 0.4 * FG – 0.7 * FGA – 0.4*(FTA – FT) + 0.7 * ORB + 0.3 * DRB + STL + 0.7 * AST + 0.7 * BLK – 0.4 * PF – TOV.

When most fans read a box score they tend to place more of an emphasis on certain statistical categories and that’s how so many players end up being overrated while others are undervalued. A player may score 30 points but if they turn the ball over 10 times then their value might be less than a player who scores 15 points with 10 assists and only two turnovers. The game score ignores those biases and produces a better overall measure of a player’s worth to their team.

Below you have each player’s average game score for the Missouri women’s basketball team:

AGS

Jessra Johnson 10.5

Shakara Jones 7.05

RaeShara Brown 6.57

Alyssa Hollins 5.92

Bekah Mills 4.71

Christine Flores 2.91

Toy Richbow 2.05

Jasmyn Otote 1.48

Bailey Gee 1.34

Amanda Hanneman 1.18

Marissa Scott 1.04

Kendra Frazier 0.37

BreAnna Brock 0.25

In the next couple days I will calculate the average game score for some of the better players in the Big 12 to say how the Tigers stack up.

Hollins, Stein discuss Mizzou ‘39

Today I had a chance to talk to Missouri coach Cindy Stein and senior Alyssa Hollins about Hollins being named to the Mizzou ‘39. Stein was obviously very proud of her lone senior.

“That says a lot about the young lady,” Stein said. “She’s an amazing person and does so many things that a lot of people don’t see whether it’s in the community or things she does with her academics.”

Hollins, never one to revel in her success, was quick to deflect the credit to someone other than herself.

“I think it speaks more to the athletic department than to myself.”

She added that she hopes the honor will inspire future seniors to work hard not only on the court but in the classroom and community.

“Hopefully the girls hear about it and they strive for it later on when they’re seniors.”

Hollins selected to Mizzou ‘39

Senior guard Alyssa Hollins was one of 39 University of Missouri seniors chosen to the Mizzou ‘39, a prestigious award given out by the Mizzou Alumni Association. 

Here is a description of the award from mutigers.com:

The award program, created by the Mizzou Alumni Association in 2005, honors students in the spirit of service displayed by founding families of the University in 1839.

Hollins and the rest of the class selected for their academic achievement, leadership and service to the University and community. Recipients are selected by a committee of alumni and faculty that reviews the applications and conducts interviews. Recently Hollins and the other 38 seniors were publicly revealed for the first time at a ceremony on the Francis Quadrangle.