Alabama’s Herb Jones had the ball under the basket. The Tide executed their play perfectly — having him fake a screen and slip his way to the basket — to get him there.

All he had to do was put it up and in.

If he put it up and in, No. 18 Missouri’s 22-point lead would have been erased. The Tigers would have blown a golden opportunity to take down the No. 10 team in the country on national TV, probably jump up in the AP Top 25 rankings and all but secure a spot in the NCAA tournament.

Jones pump-faked Dru Smith into the air and onto the baseline. He put it up. And Mitchell Smith rejected him.

“Dru came over, doing great help and made Herb shot-fake, and I just saw my opportunity to jump up and block it,” Mitchell Smith said. “It went according to plan and I got a block, so it’s all good over here.”

Smith slammed the ball against the backboard with his right hand and it fell into the arms of Xavier Pinson, who Alabama immediately fouled. As the whistle blew, Smith turned to the scorer’s bench, balled his fists and yelled toward the crowd.

A very loud sigh of relief, perhaps. Missouri knows it nearly let this one get away. But it held on to beat the Crimson Tide 68-65, handing them their first conference loss.

“You always dream about stuff like that,” Mitchell Smith said. “Like you would be more excited, but that’s just another play to help my team win.”

The Tigers made zero field goals in the final six minutes of the game, with their final one being a turnaround jumper from Mitchell Smith.

They went away from what got them a 22-point lead in the first place: aggressiveness on offense from the moment they got the ball to the moment it went in the basket. And Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin knows that wasn’t something the Tigers could afford to do against Alabama, a team with national title aspirations.

“I thought our guys settled, because they looked at the score instead of finishing the game on the floor,” Martin said. “You can’t do that with this level of team, with the way they drive the ball and make plays.”

Nothing encapsulated Missouri’s first half more than the way it ended. Alabama’s John Petty Jr. missed a jumper, which Jeremiah Tilmon corralled on the glass. He fired it out to Dru Smith, who did what Missouri set out to do all half: play fast.

Dru Smith turned on the jets, driving into the lane right away. Somehow he found the vision to kick it out to Mark Smith in the corner. Mark Smith missed the three, air-balling it long, but the ball fell right into Mitchell Smith’s hands and the third Smith to touch the ball on the possession layed it in.

It was tic-tac-toe, or in this instance, Smith-Smith-Smith.

“I thought early, we definitely were doing a great job of getting the ball out, getting some easy layups,” Dru Smith said. “So I think there was a little bit of a shift there on the offensive end. I think we just needed to be a little bit more aggressive.”

Mark and Dru Smith combined for 25 points in the first half. Dru Smith’s output came early, scoring nine of Missouri’s first 11 points.

The redshirt senior came into the game with a mandate to be aggressive, both in transition and in the half-court. Everything fell in the paint, from mid-range and from deep for Dru Smith, as it often seemed like he was just determined to score and there was nothing Alabama could do to stop him.

At one point, he took the ball at his own free throw line, drove down the court, plowed his way through three Crimson Tide defenders in the paint and put a layup up and in.

“I knew we couldn’t come out flat against a team like that,” Dru Smith said. “I thought we did a great job, obviously, there in the first half and early in the second … I thought we wanted to come out aggressive and try to make plays.”

Mark Smith, on the other hand, earned a round of applause as he checked out of the game at one point.

The Mizzou Arena crowd recognized what this game meant to him. Smith had been benched for two games, put back into the lineup only due to Javon Pickett’s injury and proceeded to play his best half in months.

Not only that, but the fans recognized his hustle. Smith played ferocious defense, picking up four steals in the frame.

“Even though he was one for eight [from three] I thought he played a good game,” Martin said. “When he was struggling, I don’t think he was defending at the level, and I thought he did a great job defending today. I thought he was consumed with his shot not falling … and that took precedent over all the other stuff that made him a good basketball player.”

As well as Missouri played in the first half, it still came _this_ close to blowing it at the end. It looked suspiciously similar to the Mississippi State game, when the Tigers had a double-digit lead and ended up losing by double-digits.

Martin, though, won’t focus on what almost happened.

“I’ll do everything in my power to try to celebrate today and not watch any film outside of what’s on TV and relax,” Martin said. “And then I’ll go to my daughter’s volleyball game in Kansas City tomorrow, and then we’ll go from there.”

Two young fans in attendance Saturday afternoon certainly didn’t focus on what almost happened. Their father rushed them down, past the media section, to catch Mitchell Smith before he headed to the locker room and have him sign their gameday posters.

“We love that,” Smith said. “We love having fans here, even if it’s just a little bit to a lot. Just to have that interaction, it feels good. That’s why we play. We’re playing for people. So it feels good.”

_Edited by Kyle Pinnell | kpinnell@themaneater.com_