COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Jabari Brown scored a career-high 24
points and Jordan Clarkson added 22 to help Missouri defeat IUPUI 78-64
on Monday night.
The Tigers finished 5-0 under coach
Tim Fuller, who filled in for Frank Haith as the head coach served an
NCAA-mandated suspension. Haith will return to the bench for the team's
Thanksgiving matchup against Northwestern in Las
Vegas.
Missouri (5-0) scored 13 of the game's first
17 points and never trailed en route to winning its 22nd consecutive
contest at home and its 77th in a row against nonconference opponents at
Mizzou Arena.
Missouri's lone returning starter from
a 23-11 season, Brown shot 7-of-12 from the field and 5-of-8 from
behind the arc. The junior guard joined the Tigers for the second half
of last year after transferring from Oregon, where he only played two
games.
Ja'Rob McCallum scored 14 points and Ian
Chiles added 12 for IUPUI (1-5), which shot 50 percent from the field in
the first half but only 39.4 percent in the
second.
Missouri made 50.9 percent of its shots and
took a 47-34 halftime lead, but IUPUI hung around, narrowing its deficit
to 70-61 with 6:39 left on a jumper from Chiles. Missouri's Clarkson
then scored the game's next five points to give the Tigers a 14-point
lead with 4:13 remaining.
IUPUI's Chiles averaged
19.2 points per game entering the night to lead the Summit League, but
his 12 points were his second-lowest output of the season. McCallum and
Justus Stanback combined for 25 points off the Jaguars' bench, which
outscored its counterpart 25-9 for the game after failing to register a
point in both of IUPUI's last two games.
Picked to
finish last in the eight-team Summit League after a 6-26 campaign a year
ago, IUPUI lost 63-61 to Northwestern on a last-second shot Friday and -
with the loss tonight - fell to 0-6 against teams from the Southeastern
Conference.
A season-low attendance of 6,065 watched
Missouri shoot 8-of-19 from 3-point range after only making two of 14
attempts against Gardner-Webb on Saturday. The Tigers' campus is on
Thanksgiving break.
The game marked the second
contest for both teams in the Las Vegas Invitational, but it had no
impact on the outcome of the tournament. The schools will travel to
Nevada for games on Thanksgiving.
