Mizzou overtakes Arkansas for fourth straight victory

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The Missouri Tigers continued their recent trends.

Get ahead with a fantastic start, go into halftime with a good lead, play sloppy for parts of the second half, but control the end.

And those tendencies led the Tigers to an 83-65 victory over the Arkansas Razorbacks Saturday at Mizzou Arena, pushing Missouri to 4-1 in SEC play, extending the best start to conference play the Tigers have had since joining the SEC.

Arkansas opened the game with a dunk, then it was all Missouri.

The Razorbacks led for a total of 59 seconds as the Tigers took the lead for good with 18:40 left in the first half on a Tamar Bates 3 points from the left wing.

The Tigers led for 38:40, increasing their time to a 154:48 lead in 160 total minutes during Missouri’s four-game winning streak.

Trent Pierce took a diet of Tony Perkins for a 3 from the left wing, then Bates made a layup and a 3, Perkins added two free throws, Marc Mitchell had a meal of Caleb Grill for a vicious two-handed slam and Bates added 3 more as Arkansas missed 11 straight shots in five minutes.

At the end of the Tigers’ first drive, they led 18-2.

“It was a tough team that we played very physical,” Missouri coach Denis Gates said.

Arkansas was able to cut the lead to 9 in the next few minutes, but the Tigers responded with an 8-0 run to take a 35-18 lead with 8:08 left before halftime.

Missouri held a double-digit lead throughout the first half and extended the lead to as many as 17 points after a Grill 3 made the score 43-26, a Jacob Crews the second-chance dunk made it 50-33 and a Mitchell layup sent the Tigers into halftime with a 52-35 lead.

Bates and Grill reached 1,000 career points with their first-half performances.

“It’s definitely a great personal accomplishment, but it wasn’t on my mind coming into the game,” Bates said. “I just wanted to go out with the ‘W’ and, I mean, God willing, I was able to score 1,000 points. … I don’t think it’s ever happened that two guys scored 1,000 points on the same night in the same game.

After scoring 50 points in the first half against Floridathe Tigers have scored 102 points in the last two halves and 185 in the last four.

Missouri shot 19 of 34 overall and 9 of 17 from 3 in the first 20 minutes, while Arkansas shot 16 of 38 from the field and 3 of 14 from deep.

Arkansas did not shoot a free throw in the first half.

“We hit that lane 55 times, we had 35 touches, lane contact in the first half,” Arkansas coach John Calipari said. “And maybe some of these teams are really good at protecting the bumps and everything else, but we drive the ball and the idea is to foul.”

But the problems that have plagued the Tigers in each of these recent victories reappeared in the second half.

Prolonged sloppy play, turnovers, missed attempts at positioning against big defenders, all allowed Arkansas to cut what was a 20-point lead early in the second half to a 10-point margin with 9:44 left.

That remained a double-digit lead for the Tigers, but the Razorbacks managed to stay within about 10 points until two Antoine Robinson free throws, his first points of the game, pushed the lead to 12 with 5:27 to play.

“I want 100 percent of our team to play well at the same time,” Gates said. “…We didn’t click on all cylinders. And there are some things that I see that maybe you don’t see, I can’t tell you, I’m going to keep this a secret, but I just think our team is growing and we’re moving in that direction for some time. long term.”

A Crews layup, two more Robinson free throws and a Robinson 3 well beyond the left wing put the Tigers up 79-63 with 3:08 to play.

The Tigers regained a 20-point lead when Grill turned a steal into a dunk to punctuate the game with 1:13 remaining.

Missouri shot 29 of 63 (46.0%) from the field, 11 of 23 (47.8%) from 3 and 14 of 19 (73.7%) from the free throw line, while Arkansas shot 28 from 3 (73.7%). 63 (44.4%) overall, 5 of 23 (21.7%) from deep and 4 of 8 (50%) from the line.

Missouri started to gain rebounding margin again, leading by one at 39-38, giving the Tigers the rebounding advantage in four of five SEC games.

The Tigers assisted on 20 of 29 shots.

After the match, the team surrounded Gates during his postgame interview, holding their fingers to their lips and appearing to silence everyone watching.

“We’re just not going to talk too much,” Bates said. “We know what the media says about us across the country…we don’t really get talked about and we don’t really care. We’re just going to continue to show up and do what we do because, I mean, the message has been consistent in that we know what we have in this locker room and we’re confident. So it’s like, like I said, we’re not going to talk. We’re just going to keep hooping.

Missouri (15-3, 4-1 SEC) will look for its fifth straight victory when it plays Texas at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

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