Missouri basketball day-after takeaways: Why Ole Miss win bodes well for grueling stretch

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So long, January.

Missouri basketball will finish the opening month of Southeastern Conference play with five wins and two losses in the league.

No. 24/22 Missouri basketball beat No. 16/16 Ole Miss 83-75 on Saturday evening at Columbia, jumping into a share of third place in the SEC standings.

Senior guards Tamar Bates and Caleb Grill’s combined 51 points commanded the bulk of the immediate postgame attention. Only two players all season had tallied 25 or more points in a game against Ole Miss this season. Mizzou doubled that total in one night through Bates’ 26- and Grill’s 25-point performances.

More: ‘Special performances’: How Missouri basketball’s Tamar Bates, Caleb Grill sunk Ole Miss

But there was a lot more noteworthy action as the Tigers knocked off their third ranked opponent of the season. Here are three day-after notes from Saturday’s win:

Has Missouri basketball has turned rebounding into a strength?

Missouri has outrebounded its opponents in five of its seven SEC games so far, which is a good barometer for improved performances but a metric that doesn’t quite tell the full tale.

Per CBB Analytics, the Tigers have a 32.1% offensive rebounding rate in conference play, which is in the top third of all Division-I teams. Missouri has a defensive rebounding percentage of 72.4% in that same timespan, which is in the 81st percentile among Division-I teams.

Against Ole Miss, Missouri pulled in 28 of the 33 available defensive boards and held the Rebels to three second-chance points, and it grabbed 11 of the 34 available offensive boards and put up eight second-chance points.

That’s the metric that matters.

On Saturday, the success was by committee. Five different players had between five and seven rebounds as the Tigers won the battle on the boards 39-28.

That tells us that the Tigers, who finished last in the league in total rebounding in both of Dennis Gates’ first two seasons in Columbia, are now a factor on the boards — at least enough for rebounding…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/missouri-basketball-day-takeaways-why-185556113.html

Author : Columbia Daily Tribune

Publish date : 2025-01-26 18:55:00

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