Tigers hold on

Big 12 Conference men’s basketball just isn’t that easy.

Facing a Colorado team that, barring an upset in the conference tournament, has only two games left in a dreadful season, Missouri took a 21-point lead with 3:25 remaining in the first half. Matt Lawrence was 5-of-6 from behind the 3-point line, Stefhon Hannah had a chance for Missouri’s first triple-double, and the rest of the team allowed Colorado to shoot only 35.1 percent from the field.

Frankly, Wednesday’s game at Mizzou began to resemble some from November and December, matchups against teams from small conferences that just came to Columbia for a name recognition and a blowout loss. When playing against Stetson, Army and Southern, it’s possible to dominate a team for 40 minutes. The Buffaloes might be a bad Big 12 team, one that has won only six games this season, but they still are a Big 12 team.

“The game was going to our liking in the first half,” Missouri coach Mike Anderson said. “But some of our guys thought the game was over with.”

Instead of being able to coast to its seventh Big 12 win this season, Missouri allowed Colorado to pull within three points three times in the second half. Eventually, though, Missouri’s superior depth allowed it to grow the lead back to 16 points before winning 91-82. Still, freshman guard Keon Lawrence admitted that the Tigers (18-10, 7-8 Big 12) did let up at times.

“We really thought the game was over,” Lawrence said. “We were really thinking, like, ‘Well, we OK. We got them by this much, this much, this much.’ We can’t think that. We gotta play hard no matter what.”

In the first half, Keon Lawrence said, the Tigers were playing on emotion. Some of the emotion may have been the left-over frustration they felt from losing a winnable game Saturday at Nebraska, one that may have taken away any chance Missouri had of getting an at-large NCAA tournament bid.

Or, as some of the players suggested after the game, it was to give senior Marcus Watkins a victory in his final home game.

Watkins, though, did more than just accept the victory as a gift from his teammates. He scored 15 points and played 26 minutes, both career highs. And Anderson said he didn’t play Watkins just because it was his final home game.

“He’s won some games for us,” Anderson said. “Marcus is a senior, and sometimes you got to lean on a senior for leadership, especially when you get into this part of the season. He’s going to be out there.”

In the first half, at least, seeing Watkins seemed to inspire his teammates.

“They wanted to win the game real bad for me,” Watkins said. “We were talking about it in the locker room before we came out and started warming up.”

But, that emotion for one player usually doesn’t last for that long. Eventually, a team needs to actually make plays and execute what it’s trying to do. And when the shots stop going in, as they did for Missouri in the second half, the need for something extra becomes more important.

Often, Anderson puts reserve forward Darryl Butterfield into the game for a spark and a little bit of extra-aggressive play. But Butterfield landed awkwardly after attempting a layup in the first half, bruising his back on the play, causing him to miss the rest of the game.

So, with the Tigers lacking the player they go to for a boost, Anderson used Vaidotas Volkus in Butterfield’s place. While Volkus’ 5 points and 4 rebounds don’t seem that impressive, Anderson praised Volkus’ effort.

“Volkus, I thought he was that Darryl Butterfield,” Anderson said. “I mean, he did a lot of the little things, and I really liked what he was doing on the defensive side. I mean, he plays with his heart. His body means nothing to him. It’s like a kamikaze, he’s all over the place. You gotta have a guy with that effort. If i can get other guys to play at that level, I’ll tell you what, I’d really, really like this basketball team.”

Volkus also recognized that he needed to replace what Butterfield usually gives Missouri.

“Darryl Butterfield, who usually gives the energy, gets hurt so I need to step up,” Volkus said. “Coach (Anderson) kind of trusts me now. I did my best to get rebounds, everything I can.”

At least against Colorado, that was enough.