It didn’t quite match the energy of the Border War, but it did match the outcome as the Missouri Tigers won their ninth consecutive game Saturday.
Mizzou beat the Long Island Sharks 88-61 as the Tigers returned to opponents near the bottom of Division I after playing a team at the top.
“Obviously that was an emotional game, emotional win,” Missouri guard Marques Warrick said. “But we knew it was on to the next one. We’ve got to have a short memory with that stuff, whether it’s win or loss.”
With Mizzou Arena less than half full for an 11 a.m. start the day after the end of the first semester in Columbia, the Tigers struggled to get going, an issue fans have seen at times early in the season.
LIU took the initial lead, then the teams traded the advantage seven times in the first five minutes, leading to an 8-7 LIU lead with 15:31 left to play.
Then the Tigers found their energy.
Tamar Bates made two free throws to take the lead for good at 9-8 with 15:29 left, then Aidan Shaw collected a pass from Anthony Robinson for a right-corner 3, using a friendly bounce off the side of the rim to put the Tigers up four.
Mark Mitchell spun through the paint for a layup, Warrick added a 3 off a Shaw assist then Mitchell turned a Robinson steal into a layup before Robinson hit two free throws himself to complete a 14-0 Tiger run and put Mizzou up 21-8 with 11:24 left.
“Our bigs were just a step slow today, so I went small with Mark Mitchell, Aidan Shaw, Trent Pierce, and those guys were able to bring us home,” Missouri coach Dennis Gates said.
LIU cut the lead to 9 with 6:21 left to play, then Pierce got to work.
The sophomore connected on three consecutive 3s in less than 30 seconds to extend the Tiger lead to 33-17, then added two more attempts from deep, a layup and a fastbreak dunk off a Mitchell assist to score 17 points in less than 7 minutes, while extending the Tiger lead to 45-24 at halftime. Pierce ended with a game-high 24 points, shooting 8-of-14 overall, 5-of-11 from 3 and 3-of-3 at the line, while grabbing four rebounds and tipping three steals.
“We knew they were a switching team,” Pierce said. “So just wanted to confuse them with certain actions and did confuse them on some of the rotations. They messed up on their rotations and left us open a few times. … Credit my teammates for finding me. I had a good shooting day, it’s been a rough couple of games for me shooting and I think just, my confidence, knowing that I could shoot the ball, coach, my teammates, you know, encouraged me just to keep shooting.”
Tony Perkins connected on a 3 to open the second half, creating a 24-point advantage, but a stretch of Tiger turnovers led to an 8-0 LIU run and a Gates timeout with 16:16 left to play.
The Tigers got back to work after the pause, with Warrick hitting a fastbreak layup, Bates and Mitchell both adding layups and Shaw hitting a free-throw and a layup to extend the lead to 57-35 with 13:30 left.
Mitchell added a layup, two of his 15 points, then Robinson turned a steal into a dunk to create a 61-35 lead with 12:13 left to play. Robinson seemed shaken up after the dunk and did not play the rest of the game.
“Ant is OK, he was perfectly fine,” Gates said. “I just decided to stay with what we were doing and that was Marques and obviously Tony (Perkins) with increased minutes. But also Annor Boateng ended up getting in a little bit more playing the top of the zone and when you have guys up there and when you play majority zone, there’s specific guys in certain situations that only play the top of our zone. And I wanted to stay consistent.”
A Jacob Crews 3 extended the lead past 30 for the first time at 67-35, then the Tigers held at least a 23-point advantage the rest of the way.
Missouri shot 31-of-55 (56.4 percent) from the field, 14-of-28 (50 percent) from 3 and 12-of-19 (63.2 percent) from the free-throw line.
In the Tigers’ two games since losing Caleb Grill, the Tigers shot just 22 total attempts from 3 (nine against Cal and 13 against kansas), but with Pierce leading the way, Mizzou got back to firing from deep throughout the matchup.
“Most importantly, what jumped and changed the entire analytics sheet was our attempts from 3,” Gates said. “The last three games, we probably have not combined … to our 28 attempts tonight.”
The Tigers also entered the matchup second in the country in bench points per game at 44.1 behind only Southern’s 44.8. With 53 on Saturday, the Tigers’ average rose to 45.0 for first.
Pierce also became the seventh player to lead the Tigers in scoring this season.
“When you can have that dynamic ability, it helps you in the scouting report,” Gates said “Trent wants to play. What he showed today was his ability to not focus on the minutes he had, but doing something with what he got. And you didn’t see him blink at all when it came down to drawing fouls, when it came down to driving gaps, when it came down to pursuing rebounds. And obviously the byproduct of that, you didn’t see him think and he was just right there, patiently waiting for open jump shots.”
Pierce led the way with 24 points, while Warrick had 16 and Mitchell had 15 points and team-highs of seven rebounds, five assists and three blocks.
Shaw had six points and five rebounds, while Mizzou dished out 20 assists to 13 turnovers.
Missouri (9-1) will look to keep its winning streak alive when it hosts Jacksonville State at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Stay up to date on all the Mizzou news with your premium subscription
Talk about this story in the story thread and discuss so much more in The Tiger Walk
Make sure you're caught up on all the Tiger news and headlines
You can follow me on X @kyle_mcareavy for more news and updates.
