COLUMBIA, Mo. - The Tigers smohered North Florida defensively and took care of the ball on offense in an 85-51 win against the Ospreys on Saturday at Mizzou Arena.
Jordan Barnett had a double-double, finishing with 18 points and 11 rebounds, Reed Nikko had 12 on 6-of-8 shooting, Kassius Robertson and Jordan Geist added 11, Jeremiah Tilmon scored 10 and Missouri (9-2) won its fourth straight.
It was Barnett's second double-double of the season. After scoring 14 points combined against Utah, Emporia State and Long Beach State, Barnett's averaging 18 points per game during the last six games.
"His ability to rebound helps us in other areas," Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin said. "Because he's the one guy with that size and that length, so the demand I put on him, because I think he has it in him, and he's shown it, especially the past three games."
The Ospreys (5-8) entered the game shooting 40.4 percent from 3-point range and left Mizzou Arena shooting 38.7 percent from deep. North Florida averages nearly 12 made 3s per game but made just 5-of-28 3-point shots.
"That's exactly what we wanted to do," Barnett said. "Hold them - I know they're supposed to get up 30 attempts a game, so the fact that they only hit five of them against us, that's huge.
"We were almost suffocating at times. They couldn't really get much off, they couldn't really hit many shots. I think that's us playing extremely good defense, and good help defense when we needed to."
The Ospreys went more than eight minutes without scoring in the first half, and in that time Missouri ripped off a 20-0 run to turn a 6-5 deficit into a 25-6 advantage it never released. North Florida got no closer than 15, and couldn't get the Tigers' lead under 25 in the second half.
Missouri clearly knew what North Florida was trying to do, and had a good game plan to stop it. Defensive hands on the perimeter were always high, and numerous times in the first half, the Tigers would switch a forward, usually Kevin Puryear or Jontay Porter, early enough in the pick and roll to eliminate it almost entirely. That usually left Blake Harris or Geist alone in the paint on 6-foot-8 Noah Horchler, but the Ospreys were unable to capitalize.
"We were switching one through four, really," Robertson said, "and we were making sure we switched up, as soon as we switched our big men would have high hands because they've got four guys shooting 40 percent from three. So we were very conscious of that, and it wasn't just the guards' duty to do that, it was definitely the bigs coming off of those ball screens."
Missouri had 19 assists, led by Harris' seven and Porter's five, to 12 turnovers. Two sticking points for Martin after the game were ball control and how he felt the Tigers didn't attack the paint as aggressively as he would have liked for the first 25 minutes.
Porter also finished with six points and 10 rebounds, and was a major reason North Florida's mid-game switch to zone didn't last long.
Terrence Phillips left the game in the first half after playing a minute and did not return. Martin said he didn't know much about the injury, which Phillips told him was a foot injury, and the team would find out more in the coming days.
The Tigers had 40 points come from bench players, including a basket from Brett Rau and a three from Adam Wolf, who's now 3-for-3 from deep this season.
The Tigers host Stephen F. Austin at 8 p.m. Tuesday. The Lumberjacks are 10-1 and beat LSU 83-82 on the road Saturday. They come away with steals at the second-highest rate in the nation on defense, and opponents turn the ball over on a 29 percent of possessions. Their lone loss was a five-point setback Nov. 22 to Mississippi State.