COLUMBIA, Mo. – RaeShara Brown scored a career-high 27 points, helping Missouri overcome a 12-point deficit in the final minutes of regulation and upset No. 22 Texas 85-80 in overtime on Saturday.
San Antonio native Christine Flores added 24 points and Dallas-area reserve Jasmyn Otote hit four 3-pointers to give Missouri (9-6, 1-0 Big 12) and new coach Robin Pingeton a signature Big 12 win in the conference opener for both teams.
Ashleigh Fontenette and Chassidy Fussell scored 22 points each for Texas (11-4, 0-1). The defeat marked fourth-year Texas coach Gail Goestenkors' first loss to Missouri after five straight wins and the Tigers' first win over Texas in a decade.
Texas was in control most of the game against a team that earned just two conference wins and finished in last place in the 2009-10 Big 12 season, leading to the departure of longtime coach Cindy Stein.
The Longhorns stretched a four-point halftime lead to a 72-60 advantage with under three minutes remaining before Missouri's late run, aided by several layups and point-blank shots after 6-foot-4 Texas center Ashley Gayle fouled out with about one minute remaining.
Missouri was coming off a pair of 32-point losses to Top 25 teams Xavier and Florida State in its previous two games.
"When we were up 12, I thought the game was pretty much over," Goestenkors said. "We did just about everything you could wrong."
Texas point guard Yvonne Anderson, a former Miss Show-Me Basketball and the daughter of Missouri men's coach Mike Anderson, scored nine points with four assists but also had four turnovers and missed 4 of 6 free throws.
Pingeton, a former Iowa State assistant who spent the past seven years coaching Illinois State, wasn't quite ready to call the surprising win her biggest in Columbia. But with Missouri's second win over a ranked team this season — the first such mini-streak in 10 years — she said the long-suffering program is headed in the right direction.
"This is something that hasn't happened for a long time," she said. "They believed in themselves. That's a huge stepping stone for our girls."
Missouri shot 57.7 percent in the second half after connecting on just 26.3 percent of their shots in a ragged, turnover-filled first half for both teams. A Brown layup to start the extra period gave Missouri a lead they would never relinquish.
"When we went to overtime, we knew we were going to win," she said. "It just felt so good when the buzzer sounded."
Anderson came to Columbia following a stretch of four high-scoring games, including a career-high 21 points against Cincinnati at a holiday tournament in San Diego. In her first season as a full-time starter, the 5-foot-7 guard is averaging 12.1 points and has scored in double figures in 10 games — nearly twice the total from her first two seasons combined.
"She's grown tremendously," Mike Anderson said before the game. "She's taken great strides in becoming Yvonne. When she was here, she was always Coach Anderson's daughter. She's blazing her own trail."
But it was Missouri's Texas transplants who made the biggest difference. Flores acknowledged the added motivation against the Longhorns and other Big 12 schools from her home state.
"It's always a little more personal," she said. "These are the games you want to win so bad, and when you do it's that much sweeter."
The Texas roster also includes freshman center Anne Marie Hartung of Bowling Green, Mo., who last year won the same prep player of the year award that Anderson earned in 2008. Hartung's mother is a former Missouri basketball player, while her father played football at Missouri.
Pingeton emphasized winning over the state's top recruits at her introductory press conference. Saturday's win certainly won't hurt that effort.
"We've got a lot of work to do," she said. "We need to recruit the state harder ... I certainly think this helps."
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