December 9, 2014

By Bruno Vernaschi

Late in the second half of Missouri’s 74-50 win over Saint Louis on Monday night, senior guard Morgan Eye hit a 27-foot 3-pointer to extend the Tigers’ lead.

She said she was “just kind of feeling it, so I just went for it.”

The team’s go-to 3-point specialist had had a bit of a cold streak in her shooting in the last few games.

That wasn’t the case tonight.

“(Morgan’s) smile is worth a million dollars and I think she deserves it,” Missouri coach Robin Pingeton said. “She just works so hard and does things the right way. We definitely need her (in order) to get back on track.”

Eye finished with 20 points, including six 3-pointers.

Despite Eye’s big offensive performance, the game started off slow, with the score being only 2-2 five minutes in.

Mizzou went on a 16-2 run toward the end of the first half. But SLU stayed persistent, going into the second half down just seven points.

The Tigers were not having it. With help from sophomore guard Sierra Michaelis and company, Eye and the Tigers put it in back-to-back.

Michaelis put in five straight points and Mizzou took a commanding lead on an 11-1 run to make it clear which team was coming out on top.

The Mizzou victory comes after a loss to an at-the-time winless Bradley team on Saturday.

“Our game against Bradley was a tough pill to swallow, that was a long bus ride home,” Pingeton said. “I know there was a lot of disappointment, a lot of frustration, but I was really proud of the way we were able to bounce back.”

Eye and Pingeton agreed that Mizzou had something against SLU that it didn’t have in its game against Bradley: effort.

“We didn’t want our effort to ever be questioned again,” Eye said. “We talked about things that we can control and effort is definitely one of them. That’s not something coach should ever have to be coaching.”

The Tigers improve to 6-2 and will take on Colorado on Friday night at home.