ORLANDO, Fla. _ With the clock winding down and Missouri point guard Jordan Geist in his face, West Virginia guard Jevon Carter drilled a 3-pointer with 38 seconds left to give West Virginia the lead.
The basket capped a huge second-half rally by the Mountaineers as they rallied to beat Missouri 83-79 on Sunday night to win the Advocare Invitational.
The Tigers had a double-digit lead for most of the second half but slowly lost it over time as Carter and Daxter Miles Jr. powered the No. 23 ranked Mountaineers to the win.
Missouri held its own against Bob Huggins' early on. The Tigers drew contact and got 10 of the team's first 20 points from the free-throw line. Kevin Puryear, Jordan Barnett and Jontay Porter, three of MU's best free-throw shooters all got points from the charity stripe, which kept the Tigers in the game before Kassius Robertson took over.
Robertson kept pace with Carter throughout the first half, with each hitting three 3-pointers in the half. Robertson drilled his first 3 with 11:04 remaining in the first half to make the score 12-11. Carter scored West Virginia's first nine points, all coming from beyond the arc.
Porter blocked a shot and ran down the floor to hit a three of his own, giving Missouri a 23-21 lead with 7:16 left, its first lead of the day. Barnett and Robinson added 3s of their own to give Missouri a 29-24 lead with just over six minutes remaining.
Mizzou coach Cuonzo Martin stuck with freshman point guard Blake Harris as his starter for the third straight game, but Jordan Geist saw the majority of minutes at the point in the first half. Geist, who has played well lately, kept Missouri's offense calm in the first half and kept the team from turning the ball over for more than a five-minute stretch, an impressive feat against the Mountaineers' defense.
Geist hit a 3 with nine seconds left in the first half to send the Tigers into halftime up, 41-26.
In the second half, Missouri poured it on with help from Barnett, who finished with a team-high 21 points. The St. Louis native hit a 3 right after scoring off Jeremiah Tilmon's missed free throw to key a 7-0 Tigers run that extended the lead to 55-41.
West Virginia chipped away at Missouri's lead, led by Carter and Miles. Carter finished with 29 points, and Miles scored 26. After West Virginia shrank Missouri's lead to single-digits with help from a 3-pointer by Miles, Puryear led a 14-3 Missouri run with a pair of 3s that got the lead back to 16 points with just under eight minutes remaining.
But Mountaineers coach Bob Huggins' crew wouldn't go quietly.
Carter scored four points off a pair of steals to cut the lead to five points with 4:11 remaining. Miles scored five straight points, two coming off a turnover by Geist to make the Missouri lead 73-72 with two minutes left.
Carter's 3 with 38 seconds left gave West Virginia its first lead of the second half.
Geist missed a one-and-one with 23 seconds left to seal the Mountaineers' win. Puryear's layup with eight seconds left was Missouri's last basket. Up until then they went 5:47 in between baskets.
