After the Missouri Tigers' football team won its Music City Bowl matchup with Iowa in Nashville, the Tiger basketball team punctuated the day with an 82-65 win against Alabama State to end non-conference play in Columbia.
“First I want to say congratulations to coach Drink and the entire football program,” Missouri coach Dennis Gates said. “... It’s just remarkable what has taken place.”
The Tigers led wire-to-wire after a Trent Pierce 3 opened the scoring with 19:41 left in the first half. Pierce made his first start of the season with Ant Robinson missing the game due to an illness.
“It was an easy decision for me,” Gates said of starting Pierce. “Based off what he’s been bringing to the table offensively and defensively.”
Alabama State stayed close early, but an Aidan Shaw layup, a Tony Perkins jumper off a turnover and a Tamar Bates 3 created a 16-9 advantage with 13:37 left in the first half.
The lead reached double-digits for the first time after a Marques Warrick 3 with 9:54 left made it 22-11, then a Pierce dunk extended the advantage to 30-14 with 5:47 left.
T.O. Barrett was fouled on a 3-point attempt and hit all three free throws with 1:17 left to extend the lead to 20 at 42-22, then the Tigers took a 42-24 lead into halftime.
“T.O. is gonna be a great basketball player here at Mizzou,” Gates said. “... T.O. was able to give us some strength at that position.”
Out of the break, the Tigers quickly made the lead 20 again and held an advantage larger than that for the first 11 minutes of the half, extending as far as 26 points after a Caleb Grill 3 with 13:03 left and a Warrick layup with 10:18 left.
Grill returned to the court for the first time since the matchup with Lindenwood on Nov. 27. Grill ended with six points on 2-of-8 shooting overall and 2-of-7 from 3.
“It was good just being able to get out there and feel like myself again,” Grill said. “I feel like in the neck brace, it wasn’t my personality.”
The Tigers would reach a 26-point advantage one more time after a Pierce free throw with 3:12 left, then Alabama State ended the game on an 11-2 run to create the final margin.
Bates led the Tigers with 16 points to go with six rebounds and two assists, while Mark Mitchell had 14 points and four rebounds.
Pierce had 12 points and a team-high eight rebounds, while Perkins had 12 points, five rebounds and three assists.
Missouri shot 29-of-58 (50 percent) from the field, 9-of-29 (31 percent) from 3 and 15-of-18 (83.3 percent) from the free-throw line.
Missouri (11-2) will begin conference play with a matchup at Auburn at 3 p.m. Saturday.
“Conference records won’t indicate how good our teams are in March,” Gates said. “... The resume speaks for itself, the NET rankings speak for itself. … It’s gonna to be hard, it’s gonna be difficult.”
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