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COLUMBIA, Mo. — The last time Missouri blew Oklahoman rubble off the Mizzou Arena floor like this, the Tigers’ coach was effusive in his praise.

“I don’t know that we can play any better," then-MU coach Frank Haith said after his No. 7-ranked squad beat OU 84-49 on Jan. 3, 2012. “We played about as flawless a game as you can play.�

Times, conferences and standards have changed. On Wednesday, No. 21 Mizzou and Oklahoma reignited a Big 12 battle in the Southeastern Conference. The Tigers (18-6, 7-4) struck dominance again, winning 82-58 while dominating the paint and holding the Sooners to 31% shooting from the field.

And Missouri coach Dennis Gates struck a different tone from his relatively distant predecessor. He’s not one to offer blanket praise to a roster that he thinks has its best performances still to come.

“Defensively, it was great,� Gates said. “I think it can be better because we blew some coverages. I’ll have to watch the film. Offensively, I think our assist-to-turnover ratio (11 assists to 12 turnovers) wasn’t as good as it should be. I thought the ball stuck at some points in time and didn’t create the energy that I thought it should. But ultimately, the defense won the game in addition to our crowd.�

His program sorted itself out after an 0-2 week that saw MU lose to two top 10 teams by a combined seven points, leading OU for 39:28 of game time Wednesday.

Wednesday’s dominance came about because of a career night for power forward Mark Mitchell, who played the role of game breaker with 25 points — 13 via the free-throw line — and seven rebounds.

“Clearly, just his aggressiveness — he was a load to handle today,� Sooners coach Porter Moser said. “Quickest off the bounce, hard to guard for our guys, one-on-one.�

Mitchell scored early and often down low, driving and posting up repeatedly to fan Missouri’s offensive flame. He was hunting out those opportunities because of Oklahoma’s defensive game plan, partially, but mostly the critiques of his head coach.

Mitchell, in his first year at MU after transferring in from Duke, is one of the Tigers’ stars. He entered Wednesday third on the team in scoring but is the systemic centerpiece when on the floor, with roughly a quarter of those possessions shaking out with him as the shooter.

His scoring and rebounding chops have won Mizzou games, but that didn’t keep Gates — consistently unafraid to coach players through a good ol’ fashioned challenge — from sitting Mitchell down as Missouri tried and failed to beat Texas A&M over the weekend. Down the stretch of that closely contested game, it was Jacob Crews and Marcus Allen who earned key runs at forward.

“I wasn’t happy with his performance at all,� Gates said. “I think he got the message, to be able to come out and respond how he responded.�

“I knew that they were going to try to fan out the shooters, since we have such good shooters,� Mitchell said of the Sooners — the game-plan factor in his career night. “And obviously, after last game, nobody wants to sit on the bench that long (when) we had a chance to win. So yeah, I definitely felt a little motivated.�

That’s the coaching component.

Gates, in just his third year as an SEC coach, seems to know the landscape of the league better than most. His Tigers, of course, remain well-positioned in the conference: sitting sixth but one game out of third place. By beating OU, they staved off talk of a late-season collapse and preserved a chance at parlaying a favorable final seven games of the regular season into a double bye in the SEC Tournament and top-tier seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Gates' sage coaching style plays out in his pruning, pragmatic debriefs of games, which show he’s coaching for the long run. It even shows in the conversations he has with his younger brother.

Armon Gates, three years the junior of Dennis, is in his first season with Oklahoma. The Gates family attended Wednesday’s game — the third time the brothers have coached against each other — with customized split shirts emblazoned with both MU and OU logos.

Armon had called Dennis after Oklahoma’s 13-0 start to the season went poof in a blowout loss to now-No. 1 Alabama that welcomed the Sooners to the SEC. As Armon recounted in a pregame radio interview, Dennis gave Armon a simple guiding principle: “Never get too high, never get too low in this conference.�

That’s why Dennis evaluates his team with pats on the back for suffocating defense and suggestions about ball movement. The highs and lows of SEC play are too interconnected to stay grounded in anything else.

Mizzou got its harsh welcome at Auburn 39 days ago. It revealed a glimpse of a lofty ceiling 29 days ago at Florida, then extended those hopes even higher by thumping Mississippi State away from home 11 days ago. Just four days ago, that trajectory reversed back to earth as a Texas A&M 3-pointer dropped through the net in the closing seconds of that game.

Heed not the siren songs of praises and blues. There will be chords of both between now and the eventual end of Missouri’s odyssey — which Moser, who took Loyola this far in 2018, suggested could be in the Final Four.

All but a select few SEC teams have lost back-to-back games. Mizzou is among the successful group that capped its skid there — and in doing so, kept Oklahoma sliding.

The Tigers can now keep building, and Gates keep coaching, without too much fear or favor for the present state of affairs. The keys to a work in progress are work and progress, which seems to be in store for the seven — winnable, it must be noted — SEC games that remain.

“Nobody’s undefeated," Mitchell said. “So every team has something they need to work on.�