Missouri Basketball: Tigers Tame Lions, Look Ahead to Conference Play

The Missouri Tigers basketball team finished out the non-conference portion of their schedule with a victory over Division II North Alabama.

Mizzou dominated in all phases of the game, as they out-rebounded the smaller Lions by a whopping 61-33 margin.

They also hit a barrage of threes, including six by hot-shooting junior guard Kim English.

Freshman Ricky Kreklow even threw in a double-double, which was the first of his young Tigers career.

Seven Tigers scored in double figures for the night, which was a season-high for Mike Anderson's squad.

However, there still were some things left to be desired from tonight's game, such as second-leading scorer Ricardo Ratliffe being shutout and the Tigers committing 21 turnovers, with many of them being of the careless variety.

The impressive win was something that Missouri needed in order to build confidence as they look toward Big 12 play in just three days against the Colorado Buffaloes.

Colorado is in the first year of the Tad Boyle era, as the former Northern Colorado coach had the Buffs off to a 10-4 start this season.

They are led by sophomore Alec Burks and senior Cory Higgins, who are averaging a combined 36 points per game for the season.

Missouri has owned Colorado recently, with wins in eight of their last nine meetings with the Buffs, including four straight victories in Boulder.

This weekend we will start to find out just how good this current Tiger team is with their first conference road test of the season.

Will they be up to the challenge?

After tonight's game, it looks like Mike Anderson has his team playing at a high level and they look ready to take on anyone right now.