It was far from a triumphant homecoming for No. 2 Missouri.

Still, coach Frank Haith concentrated on the bottom line after a shaky 63-50 victory over Texas Tech on Saturday that didn’t quite flush away all the sour taste from an upset loss at Oklahoma State three days earlier.

Against a team that’s winless in the Big 12, Missouri needed a shutdown finish.

“We’re a good shooting ballclub, we just didn’t make shots,” Haith said. “We had a lot of great looks. Does that make the game look ugly? But, we won.”

Kim English scored 19 points in the first half, Marcus Denmon had 13 after the break and Phil Pressey matched his career best with 12 assists, giving Missouri just enough to avoid another stumble.

Texas Tech concentrated on shutting down Ricardo Ratliffe, Missouri’s lone inside threat who was coming off a pair of big games in which he totaled 52 points and 20 rebounds. Ratliffe was held to eight points and four rebounds and Missouri’s four-guard attack didn’t make the Red Raiders pay enough, shooting 39 percent.

“It was kind of like a great test,” English said. “If you can’t execute, you still have to get stops.”

In the second half, Missouri went more than 7 minutes between baskets. Denmon helped compensate by going 10 for 10 from the free throw line.

“I think Texas Tech did a good job inside and I think if we made shots in the first half it would seem like we played a little bit better,” Denmon said. “But good teams find a way to win, and that’s what we did.”

Jaye Crockett had 11 points and 11 rebounds and Ty Nurse scored 13 for Texas Tech (7-13, 0-8 Big 12), which shaved a 15-point deficit to seven on Clark Lammert’s 3-pointer off the glass at the shot-clock buzzer with 2:36 to go.

Missouri (19-2, 6-2) finished with six straight points, including Ratliffe’s dunk in transition with a minute left. Ratliffe started it with a blocked shot, then hustled to the other end as English saved the ball from going out of bounds.

English had 22 points and Denmon added 19 despite 4-for-15 shooting.

Missouri remained unbeaten at home, three days after an upset loss at Oklahoma State ensured a short stay at No. 2 in the rankings. The Tigers’ first 11 home victories had been by an average of 27 points.

Keeping it close was small consolation for Texas Tech.

“We have to do something about getting beat all the time,” coach Billy Gillespie said. “I don’t like it at all.”

Freshman Jordan Tolbert, the Red Raiders’ leading scorer and rebounder, had four points, four rebounds and eight turnovers in 16 minutes while saddled by foul problems. Tolbert played just 2 minutes in the second half.

“He got pushed around a little bit and didn’t respond nearly as well as he needs to,” Gillespie said. “But that’s part of the education process for a freshman, especially when we don’t have a whole lot other than him to help him inside to beat up on someone physically.”

English and Pressey had impressive totals at the half — English with four 3-pointers and Pressey a heavy contributor without taking a shot, racking up seven assists and three steals.

English hit a pair of 3s in the first 90 seconds to fuel a 10-0 opening run, but Missouri missed nine of its next 11 shots as Texas Tech rallied to tie it at 14. English scored nine points in the final 6 minutes, helping build an 11-point cushion before the Red Raiders closed the gap to seven at the break.

Tolbert picked up his third and fourth fouls in the first 1:39 of the second half, the latter a flagrant foul. Denmon hit a pair from the stripe to put Missouri up 35-24.

Heralded national football recruit Dorial Green-Beckham got a huge ovation when he arrived courtside just before game time, escorted by Missouri assistant coach Andy Hill. Fans later chanted “MIZ-DGB!” and Green-Beckham, a wide receiver from Springfield, watched the game from behind the Missouri bench.

English pretended that he hadn’t noticed, saying “What? What was going on? DGB?” but then added, “I hope he comes here.”

The wooing continued when most of the football team was introduced during a break in the first half along with a recitation of the school’s accomplishments under coach Gary Pinkel. Green-Beckham got a standing ovation on his way off the court, stopping to pose for a picture with Truman the Tiger, the school mascot.

— Associated Press —

Keiton Page tried to explain to his Oklahoma State teammates the sensation of fans rushing the Gallagher-Iba Arena court to celebrate a big upset.

With freshman swingman Le’Bryan Nash flashing the brilliance that made him a McDonald’s All-American, they got to experience it for themselves.

Nash scored a career-high 27 points, Brian Williams added a career-best 22 and Oklahoma State knocked off No. 2 Missouri 79-72 on Wednesday night, handing the Tigers their second loss of the season.

“Le’Bryan played at a very high speed tonight, a very high gear. All of his moves were a little bit more explosive,” Cowboys coach Travis Ford said.

Nash scored 13 points during a 17-4 burst that sent the Cowboys (10-10, 3-4 Big 12) into the lead in the final 4 minutes and the Tigers didn’t have a response.

Nash hit a jumper and a 3-pointer to get it going, then nailed another 3 from the left side to give the Cowboys a 65-64 lead with 3:23 to play. He connected on another 29 seconds later and ran to the opposite end of the court when Missouri (18-2, 5-2) called timeout to encourage a student section that was already hopping up and down to bring it on.

When the clock hit zero, the students rushed the court and huddled around Oklahoma State’s players at midcourt.

Earlier in the week, Page fielded questions from his younger teammates about his experiences from an upset of top-ranked Kansas two seasons ago, hoping for a similar result.

“A lot of them just wanted to know what it was like for the students to run on the floor,” Page said. “My answer’s a lot different for them. I’m 5-9. They can see, they can breathe when it happens.”

Ricardo Ratliffe had 25 points and 12 rebounds to lead Missouri, which allowed the Cowboys to shoot a season-best 59 percent. They hadn’t surpassed 49 percent against an NCAA opponent all season.

“I thought that our focus was not where it needed to be in order to win a game like this on the road,” Tigers coach Frank Haith said.

Missouri got steals on three straight possessions to fuel a 10-2 run in the first 5 minutes of the second half, taking a 48-41 lead when Ratliffe waited out two defenders leaping prematurely to block his shot at the left block before scoring the basket.

Ratliffe’s three-point play off a spinning bucket at the right block gave the Tigers their largest lead at 53-45 with 14:22 to play, but it didn’t last.

“I expected it to be a hard-fought game,” Haith said. “This is Big 12 basketball. There’s good players.

“We didn’t do what we needed to do to finish the game out once we got control of the game.” Nash had a bucket off a baseline inbounds pass and another off a post-up move against Kim English to get Oklahoma State within striking distance.

Markel Brown added another energizing play with a right-handed dunk off an alley-oop but got called for his second technical foul for getting in Matt Pressey’s face and was ejected. Marcus Denmon hit the two free throws from the technical and Ratliffe added two more off a third-chance opportunity to push the lead back to 60-53, but the Cowboys didn’t miss a beat.

After Nash’s big spurt, Williams had a two-handed dunk in transition and a three-point play to help preserve the lead down the stretch.

Nash had scored 21 points four times this season but was coming off a rough performance when he had only four points and got himself into foul trouble.

“I was trying to get aggressive in the second half,” Nash said. “I talked to my coaches and they were like, ‘Don’t try to let the ball come to you. Go get the ball.’

“Basically, that’s what my teammates did. My teammates got me the ball in good situations and once it started rolling, the shots started falling.”

Ford credited a renewed commitment from Nash, who stuck around for extra shots following shootaround instead of joining his teammates to eat.

“When he’s shooting like that, give him the ball every single time. He was making big plays on the offensive end and the defensive end,” Page said. “If (Nash) keeps playing like that and we keep playing as a team, we could be a dangerous team in the Big 12.”

Denmon finished with 17 points but on 4-for-16 shooting. Phil Pressey, the Big 12’s assists leader, matched his season low with two.

It continued a rough stretch for Top 25 Missouri teams in Gallagher-Iba Arena. The Tigers have lost six straight games while ranked in Stillwater, dating back to 1992, and may not be visiting again anytime soon with next season’s move to the Southeastern Conference.

Four of those six losses have come at the hands of unranked Oklahoma State teams.

Brown provided a boost right from the start with a thunderous right-handed jam on Oklahoma State’s first possession after winning the tip. He picked up a technical foul 90 seconds into the game that seemed inconsequential at the time but eventually led to his dismissal.

OSU made an uncharacteristic 57 percent of its shots while leading most of the first half. Page’s step-back jumper from the left elbow provided the Cowboys a 37-36 lead at the break.

The first half marked the third-best shooting performance in a half this season for Oklahoma State, the Big 12’s worst shooting team at 41 percent, only to be outdone by a 62 percent mark after halftime.

“It’s a huge win for us. It’s a big win,” Page said. “It just shows us what we’re capable of. It shows us we can play with anybody. We still have a long ways to go. … This team’s hungry. This team’s hungry for wins.”

— Associated Press —

Mizzou senior forward Ricardo Ratliffe has been named Big 12 Player of the Week, as announced by the Big 12 Conference office on Monday morning (Jan. 23). The weekly honor is the first of the year for the Tigers and it is also the first career honor for Ratliffe. The last Tiger to take home Big 12 Player of the Week honors was Marcus Denmon, who took home the award on Jan. 3 last season.

Ratliffe had a great week, averaging 22.0 points and 7.0 rebounds per game while guiding Mizzou to a 2-0 record, including one of the biggest wins in college basketball this season at No. 3 Baylor last Saturday. In the Tigers’ 89-88 win over Baylor on Saturday, Ratliffe had a career day with 27 points on 11-of-14 shooting while grabbing eight rebounds. His 27 points and 11 field goals are new career-best totals. He also went 5-of-7 from the charity stripe in that game and tallied a pair of blocks in 34 minutes. Ratliffe did all of this on the road against a Baylor front court that was billed as one of the best in the country. He was a key reason why Mizzou claimed its first road win over a top-five opponent since 1994.

The Hampton, Va., native also had a fine performance against Texas A&M last week as he posted 17 points on 5-of-7 shooting along with a career-best seven free throws on eight attempts. He also added six rebounds and two steals while playing in 31 minutes in that game.

In all, Ratliffe made 16-of-21 (.762) shots from the field while converting 12-of-15 (.800) from the free-throw line last week. He is shooting 77.2 percent this year, which ranks first in the nation and is on pace to break the NCAA single-season record. He missed just five shots last week and has only 36 misses for the entire 2011-12 campaign.

The Tigers will be back in action on Wednesday as they travel to Oklahoma State for a 6:30 tilt with the Cowboys on ESPN 1550.

— MU Sports Information —

Ricardo Ratliffe made it sound like just another game for No. 5 Missouri after holding on for a big road victory at No. 3 Baylor.

Maybe Ratliffe, the nation’s best shooter, and the Tigers are just so used to having success this season.

“It was the next game on our schedule,” Ratliffe said nonchalantly after Missouri’s 89-88 victory. “We’re just trying to go out and get better and win games.”

The Tigers (18-1, 5-1 Big 12) did both Saturday in winning on the road against a Top 5 team for the first time since 1994. They also won at a place where they had lost their last three trips, this being their last before moving to the Southeastern Conference next season.

Ratliffe scored a career-high 27 points on 11-of-14 shooting for the Tigers, who built an early lead by outrebounding Baylor’s big front-line and then made 10 free throws in the final minute to hold off a furious rally by the Bears.

“Obviously this was a great win for us,” coach Frank Haith said. “Our guys showed tremendous poise down the stretch. Throughout the game, we played with great toughness.”

Ratliffe, who is shooting 77 percent from the field this season, had a big two-handed slam dunk midway through the second half when he scored six points in an 8-0 run that put the Tigers up 68-58. Missouri still had a 10-point lead with 3:07 left, then didn’t score again until his two free throws with a minute left.

Missouri had to make 10 of 12 free throws in the final minute for the victory. Marcus Denmon’s free throw with 4 seconds left made it 89-85 before Brady Heslip hit a game-ending 3-pointer for Baylor (17-2, 4-2), which has lost two in a row after a 17-0 start.

Baylor was coming off a 92-74 loss at No. 7 Kansas that ended the Bears’ record 17-game winning streak. The loss to Missouri ended their 10-game home winning streak.

“That’s what makes our league so great. There’s no easy game,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “Hopefully we’ll get back to rebounding a little better, trying to get to the free throw line like we were for most of the year, and then go from there.”

The top two scoring and shooting teams in the Big 12 certainly lived up to that billing in the league’s first top-five matchup that didn’t involve either Kansas or Texas.

Missouri shot 55 percent (30 of 55), and Baylor finished at 57 percent (36 of 63).

Freshman Quincy Miller led Baylor with 29 points while Pierre Jackson had 20 points and 15 assists. Quincy Acy had 18 points with nine rebounds while Heslip had 10 points.

Phil Pressey had 18 points for the Tigers while Denmon had 15 and Kim English 10.

The Tigers, who have won four in a row since their loss at Kansas State two weeks ago, led only 58-56 midway through the second half when Pressey had a turnover. Heslip tried a 3-pointer and appeared to be hit when he shot, but there was no foul and Drew was called for a technical foul.

“I deserved it,” Drew said. “I didn’t cuss at him though.”

Denmon made both of those free throws, then after a layup by Acy, Ratliff had his big dunk and added two free throws between consecutive turnovers by Jackson. Ratliffe’s layup after Pressey’s steal made it 68-58 with 8 minutes left.

Jackson had 11 points and three assists in the final 2:06 when Baylor closed the game with a 19-10 run. Jackson started that when he drove and was fouled, yelling out “and one!” before he even hit the floor and the ball fell through the hoop. He made the free throw, cutting the deficit to 79-72.

After Denmon’s last free throw, his fifth in the final 33 seconds, Jackson tried to throw up a 3-pointer and draw a foul in the same motion. The ball wound up in Heslip’s hands along the left wing with no one around him.

Missouri led 39-35 at the half after a 6-0 run that included consecutive putback baskets.

By that point, the Tigers had a 14-0 advantage in second-chance points and its 10 offensive rebounds were only one fewer than the Bears’ total rebounds. Missouri finished with a 32-26 rebounding edge, and 18-11 advantage on second-chance points.

“Our ability to rebound the ball was important for us to win this game, and we were able to get that,” Haith said. “And against a team that played zone, I thought we did a great job. We didn’t want to settle for a bunch of 3s. … Those are the things we really wanted to do and get accomplished, and I thought we did that, and obviously we were able to hang on and win the game.”

— Associated Press —

Michael Dixon committed a foul and a turnover in his first minutes for Missouri on Monday. Not the way a reserve wants to get things going.

Tigers coach Frank Haith pulled the junior guard aside and told him he was playing out of control.

“Just let the game come to him,” Haith said when asked what he told Dixon.

After missing a 3-pointer, Dixon made his next four shots from behind the arc in the first half and finished with 18 points overall to lead No. 5 Missouri to a 70-51 victory over Texas A&M, snapping an eight-game losing streak to the Aggies.

The Tigers (17-1, 4-1 Big 12) started the game by making only five of their first 14 shots from the field against the conference’s best scoring defense. But Dixon’s 3-pointer with 7:22 remaining in the first half started a 17-0 run that gave Missouri a 31-17 lead.

“I missed the first 3, but it kind of felt good,” Dixon said. “I had been shooting well in warmups so it was just a rhythm thing and my teammates were able to find me. I just happened to be hitting today.”

Elston Turner hit a free throw to end the Aggies’ 6:32 scoreless drought.

“Mike could probably start on any other team in the nation,” Missouri forward Ricardo Ratliffe said. “It’s like instant offense.”

Turner and Khris Middleton both had 13 points for Texas A&M (10-7, 1-4), which scored the first seven points of in the second half to get within 42-30. The Aggies got within 10 points three times, but could get no closer.

Marcus Denmon’s steal and ensuing three-point play with 8:40 left started a 10-1 run for Missouri, which led 64-44 with 3:57 left in the game.

“We’re not the most athletic team or the quickest team in the country,” first-year Texas A&M coach Billy Kennedy said. “So we have to do a better job of being more physical. Their athleticism wore us down.”

Missouri’s last win over Texas A&M had been in the 2004 Big 12 tournament.

Missouri is ranked in the top five for the first time since 2003-04, and has won 62 of its last 65 home games, falling only to Kansas twice and Texas A&M. The Tigers’ have won each home game this season by an average of 27.6 points.

The Aggies came in allowing 57.5 points per game, holding opponents to 36.9 percent shooting. Missouri couldn’t do much better, shooting 40 percent, but the Tigers held Texas A&M to 35 percent, its second-lowest shooting percentage of the season.

Haith credited the defense for building a lead at the end of the first half.

“We were pressuring them, they shot the ball quickly, we got some stops,” Haith said. “We scored in transition. But our defense was consistent during that stretch. And I thought that was key to getting some separation.”

Denmon added 16 points and nine rebounds for Missouri, which leads the Big 12 in scoring offense (83.9) and field goal percentage (51.2).

Middleton is leading the Aggies in scoring since he returned nine games ago after surgery to repair a partially torn meniscus in his right knee. He has yet to return to full strength and cannot practice every day, Kennedy said.

Ray Turner added 11 points and nine rebounds for Texas A&M, which has lost six of eight.

“We are just trying to hang in there,” Turner said. “Everyone is trying to get used to a new thing, everything that is coming to us. New coaching staff — it’s just something that we just have to get through. We’ve just got to keep our heads up.”

Ratliffe wasn’t called for his first foul until the second half for the second consecutive game, helping Missouri avoid having to go deeper than its seven-man rotation. The Tigers outrebounded Texas A&M 38-26 and were 27 of 31 from the free throw line.

“In order for us to have the kind of year, the kind of team we want to have,” Haith said, “we have to do that every single night. And that’s all about loose rebounds. Defensive rebounding has got to be a key to our success.”

Kennedy served as an assistant under Haith while both were at Miami in 2005-06. Haith defeated his mentor and former head coach, Rick Barnes, in a 84-73 victory on Friday over Texas.

“We’re great friends,” Haith said. “I know one thing about him — he’ll get that team playing the way he wants them to play. He’s got a great job, and I think he’ll do well there.”

— Associated Press —

Missouri needed someone to step up, and Phil Pressey was not shy.

The sophomore point guard had 18 points, including seven straight to get the ninth-ranked Tigers out of trouble in the second half of an 84-73 victory over Texas on Saturday.

Pressey had 10 assists, and perhaps his most impressive stat was zero turnovers.

“He orchestrated the whole game,” Texas coach Rick Barnes said. “Look what he did for the other guys. That’s what he does. He makes the game really easy for those other guys.”

Ricardo Ratliffe made his first eight shots and had 21 points and Marcus Denmon had 18 points and 11 rebounds for the Tigers (16-1, 3-1 Big 12). Ratliffe, who takes all his shots close to the basket, entered the game leading the nation in shooting at 76.8 percent.

“I just make sure I try to finish the play whenever they look for me,” Ratliffe said. “I get down on myself sometimes and my teammates pick me up because I think they don’t expect me to miss anymore, either.”

J’Covan Brown scored 34 points, including the 1,000th of his career, for Texas (12-5, 2-2). The point total is a record for an opponent at the Mizzou Arena, which opened in 2004, topping Julian Wright’s 33 points for Kansas in 2007.

Brown was 6 for 7 on 3-pointers and made all eight free throws.

“I was just going, just playing. I wasn’t worried about carrying my team,” Brown said. “Coach was calling my number and I was just making big shots.”

Myck Kabongo had 12 points and 10 assists and Jonathan Holmes had 10 points and seven rebounds for the Longhorns. But Clint Chapman had six points in 16 minutes while saddled with foul trouble and Sheldon McClellan, Texas’ second-leading scorer with an 11.8-point average, was held to six points on 2-for-8 shooting.

“It was just silly turnovers, and not capitalizing off our turnovers,” Kabongo said. “We’ve just got to be smarter than what we were today.”

Pressey reached double figures in assists for the fourth time this season and the first in conference play. It helped Missouri go to 10-0 at home, and this was the closest call.

“I tell you what, he had a terrific game,” Missouri coach Frank Haith said. “What he meant to us offensively, what he did out there was tremendous. He had the ball all the time.”

Down by 16 points in the first half, Texas shaved the deficit to five midway through the second half with an 11-3 run — Missouri’s lone points coming on a three-point play by Pressey.

Pressey ended the threat with a 3-pointer, two free throws and a steal and uncontested dunk in a span of 50 seconds to make it 69-57 with 8:31 to play. After McClellan scored from the baseline for Texas, Pressey fed Steve Moore for an inside basket.

Brown missed part of Pressey’s torrid stretch while getting a bloody lip attended to.

Denmon was the only Missouri player who didn’t score in double figures in the last game, a victory at Iowa State on Wednesday, with six points on 1-for-5 shooting. He had 14 points at halftime on Saturday.

“Even though the last game I wasn’t scoring, you can do other things to help your team win,” Denmon said. “That’s what’s most important.”

Missouri was 8 for 11 from 3-point range in the first half, four of the 3s from Denmon, while taking a 43-30 lead. The Tigers were strong inside, too, with Ratliffe hitting all five shots from point-blank range.

Texas held its previous two opponents to 51 and 49 points, but Missouri blew past that total early in the second half. Missouri was just 2 for 10 on 3-pointers in the second half.

Texas had foul trouble in the first half, with Chapman limited to two points in 4 minutes and reserve Alexis Wangmene scoreless with four rebounds in 11 minutes.

Haith, in his first season at Missouri, beat Barnes, his mentor. Haith was an assistant at Texas from 2001-04, including a Final Four team and two others that made the final 16, and is 1-1 against Barnes including an NCAA tournament loss while at Miami in 2008.

Barnes said criticism of Haith’s so-so record at Miami was unwarranted because it was so difficult to win at that school.

“I love Frank,” Barnes said. “Missouri did good getting him and they’d better do everything they can to keep him.”

— Associated Press —

No. 9 Missouri was down to five players with a minute left and the host Cyclones breathing down its neck.

The undermanned Tigers responded in the clutch yet again and put their only loss of the season behind them.

Matt Pressey led six players in double figures with 14 points and the Tigers got past Iowa State 76-69 on Wednesday night.

Phil Pressey and Ricardo Ratliffe each added 12 points for the Tigers (15-1, 2-1 Big 12), who bounced back from a 75-59 loss at Kansas State with a team effort — even though that team normally uses only seven players.

“We were mentally tough down the stretch, as far as getting stops and rebounding,” Matt Pressey said. “We’ve really grown from that standpoint.”

The only Missouri player to fall short of 10 points was leading scorer Marcus Denmon. But he had a game-high seven assists and four crucial free throws in the final 21 seconds after Kim English and Steve Moore had fouled out.

Missouri pushed a four-point lead to 72-66 on Ratliffe’s hook shot with 32 seconds left. Iowa State’s Chris Allen responded with a quick 3, but Denmon put the Cyclones away at the line.

“They’ve bought into playing together as a team,” Missouri coach Frank Haith said. “We’ve got a lot of guys that can score. But we don’t have a lot of guys. It’s no secret. We’re not going to get any taller between now and the end of the year. We’re not going to add any dudes. This is what we got.”

Scott Christopherson had 19 points and Allen scored 17 for Iowa State (12-4, 2-1), which lost for the first time in eight games.

Royce White finished with 16 points and six rebounds, but he was just 2 of 8 from the free throw line. The Cyclones were outrebounded 38-27, hit only four 3s in the second half and went 13 of 25 from the line.

The Cyclones were also outscored 40-20 in the paint by Missouri, which has just two legitimate big men in Ratliffe and Moore.

“I just didn’t give the right effort,” White said. “It was just an effort thing.”

Missouri, the Big 12’s best 3-point shooting team so far, shot just 29 percent from long range in its loss to the Wildcats last weekend. The Tigers again struggled from beyond the arc, hitting just four of their first 19 tries. But they took a slight edge early in the second half by dominating the boards and converting their opportunities from inside.

Consecutive jumpers by English and Denmon put the Tigers up 53-48 midway through the second half. Phil Pressey then drilled a crucial 3 from the corner and Michael Dixon hit an easy layup off a turnover to make it 66-58 Missouri with 4:52 to go.

“They made the effort plays all night. We executed our game plan perfectly. They make five 3s in 21 attempts. We just weren’t tough enough,” Iowa State coach Fred Hoiberg said.

White was coming off the sixth triple-double in a Big 12 game, going for 10 points, 10 assists and 18 rebounds in Saturday’s 74-50 win at Texas A&M.

White was fired up from the tip, screaming in Ratliffe’s face after the opening basket. But White seemed a little too amped up because he picked up two fouls in the first 5 minutes.

The Cyclones withstood White’s foul trouble and poor rebounding in the first half thanks to eight 3s in 12 tries — capped by Christopherson’s half-court heave that rattled home at the buzzer to give Iowa State a 38-36 lead.

“It was a nice momentum boost. It would have felt a lot better if we would have taken care of the glass,” Christopherson said.

Missouri was one of the nation’s biggest surprises in nonconference play. The Tigers blew out Notre Dame and Cal and beat Villanova and Illinois. They opened Big 12 play with an 87-49 wipeout of Oklahoma to move to 14-0 for the fourth time in school history.

But Kansas State is no slouch itself, and the Wildcats showed it by running out to a 44-25 halftime lead and cruising to the win.

Though the Tigers finished below 30 percent from 3-point range for the second game in a row, they had just enough to get past the streaking Cyclones.

“We had a tough loss at Kansas State, and when we came back the next day in practice, the whole week we focused on being mentally tough,” Matt Pressey said. “Not so much physically, but being mentally tough on both ends, defense and offense.”

— Associated Press —

Missouri played as if its 13-0 start was no big deal. So much for Oklahoma’s impressive start.

Kim English had 23 points and nine rebounds, and the No. 7 Tigers hit 12 3-pointers and had a big rebounding advantage over a larger opponent to open Big 12 play with an 87-49 rout of the Sooners on Tuesday night.

“I don’t know that we can play any better,” Haith said. “We played about as flawless a game as you can play.”

Marcus Denmon added 20 points for the Tigers (14-0, 1-0), who were 12 for 21 from 3-point range, held the Sooners (10-3, 0-1) to 33 percent shooting and outrebounded them 38-23. Missouri is one of four unbeaten teams in the nation and the start is the school’s best since the 1981-82 team was 19-0.

“Big 12 play got here really fast, it seems like those 13 games flew by,” Denmon said. “We understand this is where teams are made, in conference play. None of those wins before conference matter.”

The margin of victory entering Missouri’s final Big 12 schedule was its second-biggest in conference play, trailing only a 45-point spread against Colorado in 2009. The dominance was a bit unexpected coming off tests in the last two games, in which they were outrebounded 41-31 by Old Dominion and allowed Illinois to make a game of it because of poor shot selection.

Oklahoma saw no flaws.

“We were amped up,” English said. “If things are going for us, it does build. We’re not looking at the score, but it did increase for us pretty well.”

Oklahoma suffered the most lopsided loss against Missouri since a 66-22 setback in 1922. It’s also the school’s worst in the Big 12.

“Didn’t offer much resistance,” coach Lon Kruger said. “We’re tested at this point. We’ll see how we respond to it.”

Andrew Fitzgerald scored all but two of his 18 points in the first half for Oklahoma, which has a pair of blowout losses against Missouri schools, falling by 20 points against Saint Louis in November. The third loss was by a point to Cincinnati.

“We suffered a loss tonight, in a big number,” guard Sam Grooms said. “But I don’t think confidence goes down from it because even the best teams lose. It takes a game like this to hit you in the mouth, to make you think about what you could have done, what you could have been better at.”

The matchup against a school coming off an impressive pre-conference schedule attracted the first sellout of the season of 15,061. That’s about a 6,000 improvement from the last home game against William & Mary on Dec. 18.

“It was great, it was awesome,” English said. “So proud of our fans, and the students were gone. Started the year off right.”

Ricardo Ratliffe added 13 points and eight rebounds, reserve Michael Dixon had 13 points and Phil Pressey had seven assists for Missouri.

Steven Pledger added 11 points for Oklahoma, but on 3-for-10 shooting with just three points in the first half while Missouri took a commanding 43-25 lead. Oklahoma has lost six of its last seven conference openers.

The Sooners were picked to finish in a tie for last in the Big 12 by coaches but entered the game among the national leaders in rebounding, offensive rebounds, and 3-point percentage, and held their previous seven opponents to 59 points. Missouri topped that total with 13:50 to go on its 10th 3-pointer by English to make it 61-34.

Take out Fitzgerald’s 16-point half and Oklahoma was just 4 for 19 from the field. Pledger was held to three points on 1-for-7 shooting for the Sooners, who shot 35 percent and whose halftime deficit doubled their previous high.

Oklahoma was just 3 for 13 to start the game, falling behind by 10 the first 6:13. Six points from Fitzgerald in a span of 1:16 shaved the deficit to four at 20-16. Missouri answered with a 10-2 run capped by Denmon’s 3-pointer with just under 7 minutes to go, and pulled away the rest of the half.

— Associated Press —