BY JEFF WALKER
A-J SPORTS EDITOR

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Pat Knight caught a glimpse of the future during Saturday’s 97-86 loss at Missouri.

At least, that’s what the Texas Tech men’s basketball coach is hoping.

Three years into Mike Anderson’s tenure, the Tigers are built and playing the way their coach expects.

Knight can only hope the same holds true for his Red Raiders, who committed a season-high 29 turnovers against the Tigers in front of 13,357 at Mizzou Arena.

“Mike’s done a good job. I mean, you guys know where it was,” Knight said. “He took it from ground zero and now he’s got it built up very well. It took him three years to get his type of players in here and now he’s done it.”

In a society that mostly lives by the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately philosophy in sports, patience might be Knight’s toughest battle. His team allowed at least 50 points in a half for the eighth time this season as Missouri ran out to a 53-41 halftime advantage.

Missouri (17-3, 4-1 Big 12 Conference) led by as many as 18 before the break as the “fastest 40 minutes in basketball,” which is Mizzou’s mantra this season, forced Tech into 17 first-half turnovers.

The Red Raiders (11-8, 1-3) had five turnovers in the first two minutes.

“I really thought we hurt ourselves, especially early on,” Knight said. “Their defense forces a lot of turnovers, but it shouldn’t be that many. We made a lot of dumb passes, a lot of dumb plays and kind of rushed ourselves.”

Tech used a late spurt to get the game back to a manageable margin by halftime, but the Tigers built the lead back up to 18 by the 14:36 mark of the second half.

More turnovers hurt the Red Raiders, but they continued to fight for rebounds and continued to draw fouls.

Tech reached the one-and-one situation at the 12:50 mark, and the Red Raiders were in the double-bonus situation with 10:20 to play.

Fewer turnovers helped Tech trim the deficit to 77-70 following a 3-pointer by Alan Voskuil at the 6:38 mark.

Missouri’s Marcus Denmon, who had only three points at that point, scored seven in the next two minutes to put the game out of reach.

Tech got to within nine points twice in the final 2:28, but DeMarre Carroll — who finished with a game-high 27 points — nailed two big jumpers, and the Tigers made six consecutive free throws in the final minute to seal the victory.

“Pat has been talking about competing and fighting and toughness, and I think you saw that,” Anderson said. “I thought they fought tooth and nail, and that’s why when you look at the rebounding discrepancy, I thought that they wanted it more.”

Tech out-rebounded Mizzou, 46-30, led by eight boards from Voskuil and seven each from D’walyn Roberts and Nick Okorie. Rebounding has been a sore spot under this coaching staff, but the Red Raiders managed to get more rebounds than their opponent for the third time in four conference games.

The Red Raiders might suffer some more growing pains, though, as they travel to College Station on Wednesday to face Texas A&M.

Missouri’s growth took three years. Anderson took over a team that finished 12-16, 5-11 in Quin Snyder’s final season in 2005-06. The Tigers finished 11th in the Big 12 that year.

Missouri finished below .500 in the Big 12 in each of Anderson’s first two seasons, but he now has the Tigers near the top of the conference standings and inching toward a top-25 ranking for the first time since the 2003-04 season.

“I’ve got more guys that can do a lot of different things than in the last couple years,” Anderson said. “I think in the last couple of years, we were limited with what we could do, especially with how I want to play. Now, I think we have more guys that fit what we do. … When you’ve got guys that can do different things, that makes basketball a whole lot of fun.”

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