COLUMBIA, Mo. • On the surface, fourth-ranked Mizzou's prospects looked dim early against No. 6 Baylor on Saturday afternoon at Mizzou Arena.

The Bears were going berserk on the boards, nabbing 13 of the game's first 14 rebounds, and the Tigers seemed content to shoot from outside.

But in a hint of the deluge to come, MU sophomore Phil Pressey flung up a 3-point attempt from the right side of the arc with just under 13 minutes to go in the half.

And unlike his last nine attempts in Mizzou's previous five games, the ball went in.

Off the glass, for that matter.

"You'll have to ask him if he called that one," Baylor coach Scott Drew joked.

Soooo .... ?

"Nah. I mean, it just happens like that sometimes," Pressey said, smiling. "I mean, I made it, so that's all that counts."

By the end of MU's 72-57 runaway before a sellout crowd of 15,061, Pressey, Marcus Denmon and Michael Dixon had four 3-pointers each as the Tigers unleashed a season-high 14.

"At the end of the day, when you're playing Missouri, you're going to give up something," said Drew, whose team gave up 27 points to forward Ricardo Ratliffe in an 89-88 loss to MU the first time around. "We decided we were going to give up the 3."

That decision probably didn't factor in such shooting from Pressey, who entered the game 16 of 64 from 3-point range this season. He made four of seven Saturday.

"We needed him not to have one of these games," Drew said.

The victory was MU's third over a top-10 team this season, second in Mizzou history only to the four registered by the 1989-90 Tigers.

To hear Drew tell it, Mizzou is virtually unstoppable.

"When Missouri is on, there is nobody in the country that is as good as them offensively. Nobody. Period," he said. "So, you've got to hope they're not on. They've been on a lot this year."

The Tigers improved to 23-2 overall and kept pace with Kansas at 10-2 in Big 12 play. The Bears fell to 21-4 and 8-4, with all their losses to Mizzou and Kansas.

The victory was the 100th in the careers of Mizzou's four-year seniors, tying the school record set from 1979 to 1983, and it also matched a career-best for MU coach Frank Haith, who was 23-11 at Miami in 2007-08.

Pressey led MU with 19 points, Denmon and Dixon added 16 each and Kim English had 12 for the Tigers, who broke open a 35-35 tie early in the second half with a 23-8 run marked by seven 3-pointers.

But 23-8 had a different meaning in the first half.

That was Baylor's rebounding margin at halftime, a statistic emphasized to the Tigers with a certain persuasiveness at the intermission.

"It was more personal to each one of us in the second half," said Denmon, who had six assists and five rebounds.

The Tigers turned around to outrebound Baylor 19-17 in the second half.

"Rebounding is all about passion, it's all about desire," Haith said. "Our effort wasn't where it needed to be in rebounding."

But it hardly could have been better from 3-point range.

The Tigers were 14 of 28, including eight of 15 in the second half. As a point of comparison, consider that they made only 10 of 22 inside the arc.

"Once one (got) hot, it seemed like all of them (got) hot," Baylor's Anthony Jones said.

Just like Jan. 21 in Waco, Texas, where Mizzou led 39-35 at halftime, the Tigers led by four at the intermission this time 33-29.

With eight points in the half, Denmon tied Jon Sundvold for 10th place on the MU career scoring list, with 1,597 points, before passing him with eight more in the second half. Sundvold was courtside broadcasting the game.

"It's a great accomplishment, but the most important thing is just winning," Denmon said. "If I move into that and I don't have wins, then it really doesn't mean anything."

Baylor tied it early in the second half with two 3-pointers by Brady Heslip, but Mizzou went on an 11-2 run capped by a 3 from English to make it 46-37 with less than 12 minutes left.

That run featured three straight possessions with an MU offensive rebound, unseen to that point in the game.

After a Baylor free throw, Mizzou uncorked four more 3s — two by Dixon, and one each from Denmon and Phil Pressey — to make it 58-43.

Baylor never got closer than 11 down the stretch.

Quincy Miller led the Bears with 20 points, but more notable was MU holding 6-foot-11 forward Perry Jones to just two of 12 field goals as the Bears hit just 36.2 percent (21 of 58).

The Tigers also contained Baylor guard Pierre Jackson, who had 20 in the first meeting but only five Saturday, after missing all five 3-pointers he tried.