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The Missouri Tigers kept up their recent trends.

Jump ahead early with a fantastic start, roll into halftime with a good lead, play sloppy through parts of the second half, but control the end.

And those trends led the Tigers to an 83-65 win against the Arkansas Razorbacks on 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 59 total seconds as the Tigers claimed the lead for good with 18:40 left in the first half on a Tamar Bates 3-pointer from the left wing.

The Tigers led for 38:40, upping their time with the lead to 154:48 of 160 total minutes in Missouri’s four-game winning streak.

Trent Pierce took a feed from Tony Perkins for a 3 from the left wing, then Bates hit a layup and a 3, Perkins added two free throws, Mark Mitchell took a feed from Caleb Grill for a vicious two-handed slam and Bates added another 3 as Arkansas missed 11 consecutive shots across five minutes.

By the end of the Tigers’ early run, they led 18-2.

“That was a tough team that we played very physically,” Missouri coach Dennis Gates said.

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

Missouri maintained a double-digit lead the rest of the way through the first half and extended as far as a 17-point lead after a Grill 3 made it 43-26, a Jacob Crews second-chance dunk made it 50-33 and a Mitchell layup sent the Tigers into halftime with a 52-35 lead.

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

“It’s definitely an excellent personal achievement, but that wasn’t, like, on my mind coming into the game,” Bates said. “I just wanted to come 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 where two guys scored 1,000 points on the same night in the same game.”

After posting 50 points in the first half against Florida, the Tigers have scored 102 points in the past two first halves and 185 in the past four.

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

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

“We touched that lane 55 times, we had 35 touches, lane touches in the first half,” Arkansas coach John Calipari said. “And maybe some of these teams are really good at guarding the bumps and all the other stuff, but we’re driving the ball and the idea is to get fouled.”

But the issues that have plagued the Tigers in each of these recent wins came up again in the second half.

Extended sloppy play, turnovers, missed attempts at posting up against large defenders, all added up to Arkansas cutting what was a 20-point lead early in the second half to a 10-point margin with 9:44 left to play.

It remained a double-digit lead for the Tigers, but the Razorbacks were able to stay around 10 points back until two Anthony Robinson free throws, his first points of the game, extended the margin to 12 with 5:27 left.

“I’m looking for 100 percent of our team playing well at the same time,” Gates said. “... We didn’t click on all cylinders. And it’s certain things that I see that you guys may not see, I can’t tell you, I’m gonna keep that secret to myself, but I just think our team has growth and we’ve been going in this direction for a long time.”

A tip-in from Crews, two more Robinson free throws and a Robinson 3 from far beyond the left wing had the Tigers up 79-63 with 3:08 left to play.

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

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

Missouri got back to winning the rebounding margin, 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 made shots.

After the game, the team surrounded Gates during his post-game interview, holding their fingers to their lips and seeming to shush anyone watching.

“We’re just not going to do too much talking,” Bates said. “We know what the media says about us around the country … we’re not really talked about and we don’t really care. We just gonna keep showing up and doing what we do because, I mean, the message has been consistent in terms of us knowing what we have in that locker room and being confident. So, it’s just like we, like I said, we’re not gonna talk. We just gonna keep hooping.”

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

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