BOULDER, Colo.—Colorado set the tempo and the tone, so the Missouri Tigers turned to their pressure defense to secure their first road win of the season.
The Tigers overcame a 13-point deficit in the final 10 minutes for a 66-62 win over the Buffs on Saturday thanks to 22 points from Leo Lyons.
Lyons scored 16 of his points in the second half to spark the Tigers (12-8, 2-3 Big 12), who snapped a three-game losing streak and a five-game road skid.
The Tigers never led in the first 38 minutes. Then, Matt Lawrence set up in the left corner and swished a 3-pointer that gave Missouri a 61-60 lead with 2 minutes left.
They wouldn’t trail again.
Lawrence said he felt confident that would be the game’s one and only lead change, too.
“I thought so. We had the momentum going. We’d been getting stops on defense. We shut down Marcus Hall. He had a great first half. We tried to contain him a little bit,” Lawrence said. “That big stop, that big steal after I hit the shot we had the fast break and the dunk, I think really did turn the tide.”
Lyons’ slam dunk after a turnover by Hall made it 63-60. After Hall, who scored 28, sank two free throws with 1:10 remaining to make it 63-62, it was all Tigers.
DeMarre Carroll missed the front end of a 1-and-1 with 34 seconds left and the Buffs got the ball, but Hall’s outlet pass to Cory Higgins was intercepted by Stefhon Hannah, who laid it in for a 65-62 lead.
“Careless pass,” Hall said with a shrug. “We had a play set up to where I was going to go up the side. I saw Cory open and I rushed the pass.”
Xavier Silas missed a 3-pointer for the tie and Hannah, who scored 11 of his 13 points after halftime, sank a free throw for the final margin.
Hall, limited to four points by a tweaked groin in his last game, scored 20 first-half points as the Buffs (9-10, 1-4) built a 34-24 halftime lead, one they would stretch to 50-37 halfway through the second half.
Starting to force turnovers, the Tigers reeled off eight straight points to cap a 13-3 spurt that pulled them to 53-50 with 6 1/2 minutes remaining, and they kept chipping away until Lawrence’s 3-pointer put them ahead for good. Lawrence finished with nine points.
The Tigers said they saw the seeds of their comeback sown earlier.
“In the beginning of the second half I think that’s when you really could see that they were starting to get tired,” Tigers backup Keon Lawrence said. “We still had fresh people on the bench.”
And those fresh bodies helped fuel the comeback as Missouri’s pressure defense finally wore down the Buffaloes.
“I just want to tell my players: Being tough is not punching somebody. Being tough is executing under duress,” Colorado coach Jeff Bzdelik said. “They turned it up a little bit, and for whatever reason when teams turn it up, we melt. We do. For whatever reason, we melt. All of a sudden we’re going to just do our own thing.”
Richard Roby had 14 points and 13 boards for Colorado, including a fastbreak bucket that gave the Buffs a 47-33 lead with 12:07 left.
Hall scored 20 points in the first half on 8-of-9 shooting, including 4-of-5 from three-point range.
That wasn’t like the Tigers, who sport the nation’s second-best perimeter defense, which went on full display in the second half as the Buffs missed all six of their shots from beyond the arc, helping to spark Missouri’s comeback.
Last year, the Tigers snapped an 11-game road losing streak with a win in Boulder.
“We just have to be more mature at the end of the game and play the full 40 minutes,” Hall said.
