Each summer, I carve out time to study Missouri’s transfer additions in their previous stops. The viewing menu starts with games against teams that finished in KenPom’s top 100. From there, I use descriptive stats to identify five “median” performances — games that best approximate a player’s typical workload and production. Those viewings form the basis of the Swing Skill Series, which blends data and film to isolate one facet of a player’s game that could shape the scope of his impact once he puts on black and gold.
When useful, I also supplement those full-game viewings with a “median-volume” clip pool, isolating games where a player’s offensive possession count reflected his normal workload.
When Missouri slugged it out against Tennessee in late February, few recognized two possessions inside of a minute as relevant foreshadowing.
With 5:32 left in the first half, forward Jaylen Carey switched onto Mark Mitchell during a dribble handoff and stuck with him through a high pick-and-roll. Carey dropped into coverage, giving Nate Ament time to recover on a driving T.O. Barrett. As Mitchell popped to the top of the key, Carey read the kickout in flight, closed out on balance, and forced a miss.
Forty-four seconds later against the same lineup, Carey executed a routine catch hedge on Anthony Robinson II. But when Shawn Phillips Jr. rolled hard behind him, Carey was stranded in space —saved only by Felix Okpara’s timely rim protection.
Innocuous as those snippets might seem, they underline the subtle but critical difference in assessing Carey’s readiness in Columbia. Dig through enough film and data, and it is clear the strapping vet understands his initial assignment. The questions only creep in once a possession forced him to make a second rotation.
And that distinction offers up the central question around Carey’s move to Mizzou: Can he carry one correct defensive decision into the next?
A lone season at Tennessee offered evidence he can occupy a functional role in a high-performing defense. The Volunteers posted a 91.2 adjusted defensive efficiency across the 1,130 possessions Carey logged, and they improved by 3.0 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor. But Carey’s overall on-off impact was neutral. Parsing lineup combinations also shows the bulk of the success was concentrated in one combination – the most-used one.
While Carey’s compatible with an elite unit, he’s also not the driving force. The value he offers is complementary. It’s also sensitive. Changing the point-of-attack defender in front of him and the rim protector behind him matters – and it underscores a fundamental question for MU coach Dennis Gates: How does he configure his rotation to get the best version of Carey?
Now, it’s important to remember that Carey was also learning on the job while on Rocky Top. Stints at James Madison and Vanderbilt saw him deployed as an undersized five. The Commodores deployed him there out of necessity, relying on his physicality and rebounding.
Volunteers coach Rick Barnes already had Okpara and J.P. Estrella in tow, and he often described Carey as a four-man in his rotation. That designation meant moving him away from the lane and into a job where he defended ball screens, selectively switched, helped to the midline and faced longer closeouts.
Play-type data drives that point home. Only 7.8% of Carey’s possessions saw him guarding a post-up. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of those shots he defended were jumpers. Playing alongside Okpara or Estrella tasked him with tracking stretch fours, floor-spacing wings or crossmatches on combo guards. Unsurprisingly, opponents pulled Carey toward the perimeter and tested how fluidly he could handle his duties across multiple defensive rotations.
As we’ll see shortly, Carey struggled at times. For his part, Barnes said a portion of those issues were rooted in unfamiliarity. That’s not an excuse for breakdowns, but it partially explains when and why they occurred.
Let’s also dispel one assumption early on: Carey’s not an inherently immobile defender.
When Carey can sit down and keep the action in front of him, his role is clearly defined, and his feet aren’t encased in concrete. He retreats smoothly enough while playing in drop coverage to stay in front of a ballhandler. Stunting toward the nail doesn’t come with a high price if he only covers minimal ground on the recovery.
In the snippets below, Carey demonstrated he can hold up over some short-duration switches. Notice where those are taking place, too: side pick-and-rolls.
Facing Syracuse, Carey played drop coverage, stayed square to J.J. Starling while maintaining proper depth and allowed Ja’Kobi Gillespie to recover and contest a pull-up. Against Vanderbilt, he offered enough cushion that Tyler Tanner couldn’t use his quickness to create separation, settling for a guarded dribble 3. Finally, against Michigan, Carey cleanly switched onto Elliott Cadeau, remained connected to his hip on a drive and saw out the possession on a spot-up triple.
Those clips are mundane, but they also establish a viable baseline. Carey executes defined tasks, assuming he has a tolerable amount of space and enough time to organize his ample frame. Do that, and Carey’s mobility and lateral agility are competent enough to ensure survival.
That proposition quickly breaks down when distances get stretched, reads come a split-second too late or a screen takes him out of the play. So, his swing skill isn’t simply playing in space. It’s whether he can reliably do his job when a possession isn’t quite so orderly.
Seeing how that plays out requires a targeted review of 30 possessions, drawn from games where Carey either had his median defensive involvement or efficiency, and 57 defensive actions.
In the targeted sample, Carey’s first action was graded correct and on time on 28 of 30 possessions. Twenty-four required him to defend multiple actions, but only six remained correct and on time from first action to last. Fifteen ended with a correct decision made late, while two ended with an incorrect final decision.
Bear in mind that the sample should not be treated as a season-wide rate. I curated the pool to identify the mechanisms behind the miscues. What it does show is that Carey usually decoded the first problem, but his reliability declined when he had to solve another in quick succession.
Put simply, Carey’s processing might be more consequential than his physical ability.
Analyzing spot-up possessions illustrates the diagnosis.
Our 30-possession sample included 18 spot-ups, and Carey made the right call on 16 of those sequences. A dozen of them ended with an open shot, yet 11 started with Carey making the correct decision in the first action. Crucially, every contested shot was preceded by an on-time action. Every open shot followed a late or incorrect one.
The triggers for those shots also mattered. A recovery that ended with a guarded shot usually started when the pass was still in the air. On open looks, Carey might not start his closeout until after the catch or the shooter was already in their upward motion.
Watching the two possessions below highlights the difference.
The first clip shows a common scenario. Texas A&M sets up in a five-out alignment and runs a middle pick-and-roll. Okpara, though, is a step too far up the floor in playing drop coverage. Jacari Lane’s burst evaporates the buffer, forcing Carey to stunt toward the elbow. Lane’s passing read is easy – kick the ball behind help and to Marcus Hill in the slot. For his part, Carey’s slightly late in recovering but able to competently contest.
However, MU showed what happens when the gap is too yawning. Again, Carey’s the nail help after a ball screen. To be clear: he makes the right call initially. Mitchell hunted Okpara on a switch and drove it. That cut off an attack angle, but Carey didn’t see Trent Pierce drift to the corner. Carey also didn’t start his recovery until long after the ball was in flight, and the delay made the closeout a desperate sprint that ended with a fly-by.
It’s also where some of Barnes’ critiques become salient.
The future Hall of Famer repeatedly framed Carey’s unevenness as a habits issue. Not physical traits. Not confidence. After Carey responded to criticism with a late-night workout, Barnes told reporters he appreciated the response. Still, it didn’t dispel the broader point: dependability comes from repeating habits in practice until they’re automatic. Given that Barnes repeatedly returned to Carey’s consistency in ball-screens and closeouts, it’s not hard to draw a connection.
Film suggests Carey understood the correct rotations, but the transition between helping, recognizing a pass, and closing out needed to be faster.
Shot-quality results reinforce how much those split seconds mattered.
The chart below draws from 101 unique possessions in games where Carey reached his median workload or median efficiency. Overlapping clips are counted only once, and 71 were classified as being directly involved. Four play types accounted for all but seven of them.
Next, look at what happens when we split those spot-up possessions based on whether some contest or none at all.
As the chart shows, producing any meaningful contest changed the outcomes sharply. Open spot-ups yielded 2.400 points per possession, compared with 0.677 when Carey supplied any contest. Missouri will not need every recovery to become a suffocating closeout. It needs Carey to arrive early enough for his size to register.
Carey’s issues, though, aren’t narrowly confined to closing out. Instead, it’s best to think of closeouts as a downstream consequence of pick-and-roll defense.
Across that sample of 101 possessions, a PNR functioned as the trigger 64 times. Only 21 ended the trip as PNR possessions. Twenty-five became spot-ups and 14 ended with the roller. In other words, they repeatedly put the Vols’ perimeter shell under pressure.
Crucially, Carey only acted as the screen defender on 30 of those 64 possessions. Otherwise, he was an off-the-ball responder helping at the nail, tagging rollers from the weak side, or operating as the low man at the restricted area. The initial screen often didn’t test Carey’s coverage. It tested whether he could complete the rotation that followed.
Again, clips reveal it’s the second duty that creates complications.
In the first cut-up, we see Okpara hedging a ball-screen. The natural counter is for the screener to slip. Sure enough, Kentucky’s Malachi Moreno winds up in a short roll. Carey rotates to the nail, and Moreno sprays a pass to Andrija Jelavic. Carey’s contest is futile.
Next, we see Vanderbilt deploy a Spain PNR, which Tennessee defends by having Estrella string out Duke Miles toward the sideline while Carey helps tag a rolling Jalen Washington. That creates an obvious bind: He can’t recover to AK Okereke popping out to the top of the arc. The ball is out of his hand by the time Carey contests.
Crucially, the movement is created by Tennessee’s defensive response to the screen. It’s a byproduct of scheme, and it only underscores the stress Carey experienced some nights.
Consider this: Carey was coded as the first source of the offensive advantage on just a dozen of the 101 possessions that I reviewed. Sometimes, an opponent did their job. Sometimes, a fellow Vol was culpable for the initial breakdown. The developmental question isn’t whether Carey can avoid conceding advantages. In some ways, it’s whether he can neutralize those originating elsewhere.
The same contrast stands out when Carey’s put into the mixer.
Drop coverage creates a modicum of stability. Our 30-possession review of Carey’s defensive actions turns up six examples. In each one, Carey makes the call, and four of them saw him execute properly. Five of them ended with guarded shots, while another produced a turnover. The explanation isn’t complex: drop keeps all the action in front, and reduces the likelihood of sudden directional changes and long closeouts.
But that conservative coverage isn’t a cure-all. On two of the possessions, Carey made the right read but was sealed off by a big executing a Gortat screen. So, it can simplify his decision-making process, but it still requires some effort to avoid giving up the middle gap.
Still, that’s a workable tradeoff compared to what can happen if Tennessee turns up the dial on pressure.
The sample turned up five possessions where UT tasked Carey with hedging a pick-and-roll. Grading shows he was on time and clean each time. But every recovery was late, and he failed to complete his next responsibility on all five of them.
The results from that handful of possessions varied: a score, a foul and an open rim attempt. Two produced guarded looks – after a Vol rotated over to supply the contest. A pair of possessions against Kentucky embodied the difference.
Watch how Mo Dioubate immediately disengages as a screener the moment Carey takes a step to hedge against Jasper Johnson. Again, UK has the Vols scrambling with a short roll, but Okpara isn’t around to clean it up. He’s been pulled out of the paint while minding Malachi Moreno in the weak-side slot.
Later, Carey and Gillespie blitzed Otega Oweh during an empty-side PNR, allowing Brandon Garrison to release freely on a roll. Fortunately, Nate Ament did his job as low man to blot out a quality rim attempt. The outcome changed, but the root cause remained the same.
It’s tempting to think that the solution is straightforward: keep Carey at the five-spot.
Data tells us that’s simply relocating the problem. Going back to our 101-possession sample spells it out.
- Hybrid: 1.071 PPP in 70 possessions
- Post: 1.000 PPP in 31 possessions.
At the four, Carey tracked stretch fours inclined to spot up and dealt with more long recoveries. A rim protector offered some coverage behind him, but Carey’s processing and short-area quickness were strained by having to make second-side decisions giving help at the nail and midline.
Sliding down the positional ladder took away burdensome spot-ups, but – as we’ve witnessed – opponents found ways to test and exploit Carey in ball-screens. Playing drop provided some insulation, but anything beyond that came with a higher risk profile.
Again, lineup construction is what modulated Carey’s defensive performance.
Barnes’ late-season comments also offer us some reason to treat last season as a developmental one for Carey. He praised Carey’s willingness to learn and accept hard coaching. After knocking off Iowa State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, Barnes said nobody on the roster had been pushed as much as Carey.
The question now is whether MU winds up as the ultimate beneficiary of those growing pains.
To an extent, Gates can provide some stability by treating drop coverage as a given when he rolls out Carey as a five. Aggressive hedges make more sense as a late-clock alternative. Switching should be rare and hyper-selective.
The real test, though, will arrive when Carey plays the four. Ideally, MU would have Bryson Tiller and Toni Bryant playing in aggressive coverages at the point of attack. That will also saddle Carey with the kind of help responsibilities that proved bedeviling.
Ultimately, though, there’s only so much Gates can do to limit the worst exposure.
And he’s betting that another offseason of work will apply the coat of defensive polish that Barnes thought was lacking last season.