With a little more than 12 minutes left against Georgia, Missouri’s Anthony Robinson II got around the right block and popped out from the wing. The junior completed a comeback when a turnover gave him time and space for an open 3-pointer. The point guard watches the jumper gently kiss the front of the rim.
He never got another chance the rest of the way as the Tigers lost 74-72.
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As strange as it sounds, Robinson’s performance has improved, as he scored 4 points on 1-of-7 shooting and committed 3 turnovers.
At LSU, Robinson’s performance was so obvious that coach Dennis Gates benched him just 92 seconds into the second half. Against Auburn a week ago, Robinson hit a 3-pointer at 7:57 of the first half and didn’t take a field goal the rest of the night.
In the past five games, Robinson has averaged 5.6 points per game and shot 27.2% from the field, including 1 of 13 from beyond the arc. Even with a strong performance against Florida, his offensive rating slipped to 95.1. The lone bright spot was Robinson’s assist, but his past two outings have begun to erode that pillar.
Thursday night provided another worrying data point on the decline. Thru lines are more than just missed shots. As the divisional round unfolds, Robinson’s offensive footprint has shrunk — and it’s already limited.
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Robinson’s defensive prowess remains, but Missouri’s prospects this season depend on turning tantalizing moments into solid performances. The next step in that evolution, specifically catch-and-shoot, will also be working with Mark Mitchell to provide perimeter balance. It’s a step NBA scouts are eager to see before moving Robinson up in the draft. Robinson started the season as a second-round pick.
The facts proved sobering. In Michigan’s past two games, Gates has shifted playing time to sophomore Toe Barrett, while senior Jaden Stone has seen increased ball-handling opportunities. However, these are temporary measures. Reaching the NCAA Tournament may require Robinson to undergo a turnaround — and quickly.
But why is Robinson so willful on a seemingly stable development path?
This was clearly not the case in the early days. In an exhibition game against Kansas State University, Robinson performed very well, scoring 16 points on 7-of-7 shooting and dishing out 4 assists. In MU’s buying game, he has a touch rating of nearly 1.026 and ranks 70th in efficiencyth The percentile among high-level players.
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What appears to be growth is actually just insulation — an easier schedule, faster pace and a more forgiving shooting diet. Game type data also tells a simple story. Robinson has a balanced shooting mix in pick-and-rolls, spot-ups and isolations.
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Against power conference schemes, however, Robinson relied more on ball-screen offenses. However, the value of those touches was only 0.710 points, a 16% decrease. Increasing transaction volume is just one way to tread water offensively. Meanwhile, Robinson’s spot-up shooting performance has dropped 40% to 0.563 points per possession, according to Synergy Sports.
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Robinson’s role as a scorer isn’t that extensive.
He averages 8.9 half-court possessions per game, ranking 70th, according to Synergyth The percentile among high-level players. This looks pretty robust. However, Robinson’s distribution ranked only 66thth Among the 78 starting point guards in this class. Among SEC starters, he’s just ahead of Georgia’s Jordan Ross. In short, Robinson was far less involved than his peers.
Considering Robinson’s efficiency (.853 PPP) further downplays the idea that he’s made a leap. Charting the average touches and efficiency of those big-name defenders only drives home the point.
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Now, Robinson is taking more shots, averaging nearly three more touches per game in 19 games, striking a balance between pull-up jumpers and catch-and-shoot attempts. It’s easy to see, however, that the biggest slippage is on his shots off the bounce.
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It’s also important to understand the background to the efficiency of these pull-ups.
In the pace-and-space era, teams try to drive center backs deep, but for some players, those shots are still legitimate weapons. Robinson was a prime example last season. This season, he averages 3.0 shots per game, ranking 76th.th Percentile of senior major league players. Although these appearances are only worth 0.84 points, their efficiency reaches 46 pointsth percentile. The volume is still there, but the returns are reduced. In other words, Robinson has fallen from elite to mediocre.
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Essentially, Robinson’s raw touches were slightly lower than what we’d expect from a primary defender in the half-court, while his efficiency was nearly 11% lower than the median for his class. Ironically, Robinson hitting those benchmarks would put him on par with Tre Donaldson, his former high school teammate and close friend who is experiencing a renaissance in Miami.
Sometimes, pull-ups are considered a settling act. But that’s not the case with Robinson. They have long been a go-to tool, dating back to high school and grassroots days. Looking back at the film can also help us make some important distinctions.
Getting the best return requires making moves that fully open up floor space, pull a chunk out of the paint, and effectively clear double gaps. Consider a modest road screen that clears the defender’s gap on the left side of the court. This modest act of rebalancing allows Robinson to attack with his dominant hand.
Sometimes the Tigers will take a different approach, with two guards clearing from the elbow toward the baseline while a big man sets a high screen. These criss-crossing tigers create the appearance of a flat dome with a pair of spatial gaps. Robinson can read his defender and choose the offensive route that best suits him.
While Gates narrowed down the triangle-based concept, the Tigers still broke out of the delay setup, featuring high-split cuts into mid-ball screens.
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Once again, it achieved the actual effect of eradicating gaps and flattening the defense. Even when a secondary move is required, such as an open-side pick-and-roll, Robinson can do it with his left hand. It also helps when screeners act like blockers and clear the way.
On the surface, the ball screen didn’t have an impact on Robinson’s performance. Opponents rarely take the ball away from him through blitzes or traps. They opted for conservative tactics, such as withdrawing or switching defenses, preferring to confine him to a siege. And they don’t highlight a glaring weakness.
Robinson feels most relaxed when he sees clean floors and easy reading. When a game upsets his image or upsets his decision tree, his pull-up diet doesn’t provide the same consistent nutrition.
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Since December, MU has steadily increased its use of run screens, putting defenders behind the screen and making it harder for them to counter run ball screens. However, this is less important when the defense is defending a shot. As a result, Robinson has no advantage to exploit, and the congestion makes it more difficult to hit Mitchell at short range.
Remember, Robinson is left-handed and he wants to drive left-handed. It is important to clear that side of the floor. However, it could also conflict with other goals MU has in mind – like shaking shooters. One strategy is to stagger screens on the wings, which also allows the wings to set ghost screens for Robinson. If that doesn’t work out, he could take cover for promotion.
However, when the trigger occurs on the left side of the court, it leaves a defensive player open. When Robinson drives, they can stunt the game and provide extra help in coverage. On top of that, more and more opponents are sinking weakside defenders, making it difficult to read kickoff and skip options.
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Even a standard corner formation can become chaotic when the top of the field (again, the left side) is crowded with defenders.
What schematic root cause analysis could explain Robinson’s catching woes?
To be honest, there is no obvious through line. Instead, the results appear to be rooted in a lack of time and space. Relying on Robinson as a floor-spacing player isn’t a primary or secondary goal on most possessions, but when the play call fails to keep the defense in trouble and the clock expires, there are few other options. For Robinson, that often means lifting a tightly defended 3-pointer late in a possession. In cleaner situations, he’ll probably be much better than the 2-for-12 he did on spot-up shots against good teams.
The focus here is Robinson’s half-court work, but there’s another variable worth addressing. Against strong opponents, he only averaged 1.8 conversion chances per game, less than half of what he had against mid- and low-level teams.
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This drop was partly intentional, as United slowed down the tempo and tended to a more conservative defensive approach to sealing off the paint. It’s a real trade-off, and it pays off. The Tigers rank fourth in adjusted defensive efficiency in SEC play, including the league’s top two-point defense, according to KenPom. But the trade-off is that Robinson has fewer opportunities to create easy offense in space (mostly at the rim) to offset the pressure of the half-court offense.
This shift is reflected in the margins. Missouri ranks just 10th in the SEC in steal rate, and Robinson’s STOCK% dropped from 5.5 to 3.0. With fewer opportunities to run, he loses a secondary source of effective offense to supplement his contested pull-ups and late spot-up jumpers. The safety valve that once supported his scoring has largely disappeared.
Please note that this should not be a source of concern. Sebastian Mack was added in the offseason to provide a complementary downhill threat to Robinson’s pull-up jumper who can disrupt the paint and bend coverage. Instead, early lineup decisions created compressed floor space that diminished Mack’s effectiveness. The UCLA transfer has found himself deeper in the rotation since Jaden Stone returned from a hand injury.
When in rhythm, Robinson’s pull-up game can still make him a capable pick-and-roll operator. But this season has increasingly exposed the limitations of his offensive abilities. Questions about set shots and contested finishes around the rim haven’t gone away. They become more urgent.
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The loss against Georgia wasn’t a terrible thing because it was. This is damning because it illustrates how narrow Robinson’s path has become: open sights, clean reads, and then nothing to follow. It was a fitting snapshot of a Missouri team that continued to show potential but struggled to cope with a slim advantage through 40 minutes, where small limitations exacerbated and punished anything less than total accuracy.
