Trailing by three in the final 15 seconds of the first half, Missouri men’s basketball got the ball to an unlikely hero for the final shot of the opening 20 minutes.
Trent Burns has played sparingly this
season for the Tigers, averaging just 5.9 minutes per game entering Saturday’s contest, and had never hit a shot from beyond the arc in his young collegiate career. But he splashed a buzzer-beating triple to knot MU up with Florida at 39 apiece heading into the half, sending a jolt of electricity through the Mizzou Arena crowd.
The Tigers rode that momentum into the early minutes of the second half and picked up their first major win of the 2025-26 season, dispatching the defending national champion Florida Gators 76-74.
The victory gives Mizzou its first top-25 and Quad 1 wins of the season after starting the year 0-2 and 0-3, respectively, in those categories.
MU surged out of halftime with a 6-0 run to move ahead 45-39, led by a pair of Anthony Robinson II layups. He put together one of his best performances of the season against the Gators, finishing with 19 points on 8-of-14 shooting and adding five assists.
The Tigers continued their charge out of the break and pushed the lead to double digits, 56-46, on a three from Trent Pierce that prompted Florida head coach Todd Golden to call a timeout.
The triple gave Pierce his first points of the season as he made his return from a lengthy absence due to injury. It was another key player making their return from injury, Jayden Stone, who got Mizzou started.
Stone caught fire early in his first start of the season, hammering home a transition dunk after he intercepted a pass and connecting on two shots from beyond the arc for all of MU’s first eight points. He recorded nine points and grabbed six rebounds in his first game action since November.
Florida responded to the deficit with a series of scoring runs, cutting the Tigers lead to 64-62 with 4:15 remaining on a Thomas Haugh jumper and prompting a timeout. The Gators completed their comeback with another big shot from Haugh, this one a triple, to pull ahead 65-64 with 3:37 remaining.
But they completed the comeback too soon.
Trent Pierce put the Tigers back ahead, 66-65, before hitting a three-pointer moving off a screen to put Mizzou up by four with just over two minutes on the clock.
MU held onto that lead for the final 125 seconds of action with the help of a banked-in triple from Robinson and a key rebound followed by free throws from Jacob Crews. Boogie Fland put up a last-ditch attempt at the buzzer with Florida trailing by two but the shot was off its mark, sealing the narrow victory for the Tigers.
The win moves Mizzou to 11-3 on the season and 1-0 in SEC play. The Tigers will travel to Lexington for their first conference road matchup Wednesday against Kentucky. That game will tip off at 6 p.m. and be broadcast on ESPN2.
