COLUMBIA, Mo. • His fourth-ranked Mizzou Tigers were engulfed in the exhilaration of their spectacular 74-71 comeback win over No. 8 Kansas, and coach Frank Haith late Saturday also might have been tempted to bask in it.

Instead, he remained true to one of the fundamental concepts that's gotten his team where it is.

"Next play," he likes to say.

In this case, it applied to "next game," at Oklahoma at 6 p.m. today, a time Haith was conscious of as he spoke and his internal clock was ticking.

"We've got to be smart in how we get ourselves ready," he said.

Step One: apply some buzz-kill in a major effort to prevent a letdown that would virtually cancel out the KU win.

"The guys didn't like it, but they're in a hotel tonight,'' Haith said, smiling. "We told them after the game; we didn't let them know before the game.

"So we saw some guys look at us cross-eyed there at the end. But I can imagine what Columbia's going to be like tonight. So we're in a hotel."

Initially, Haith said curfew would be midnight, but as he left Mizzou Arena just after 12 he said he had extended it to 2 a.m.

Apparently, he just couldn't help but allow some celebration by a team that scored the last 11 points after trailing by eight with just over 2 minutes left, a team whose will to win was bolstered by a raucous sellout crowd of 15,061.

"I think that we don't win this game without (the crowd's) energy. ... It was just absolutely amazing,'' Haith said.

MU improved to 21-2 overall and entered a three-way tie for first place in the Big 12 with KU and Baylor at 8-2.

The rally was a fusion of MU clutch shots and a Kansas collapse that included a crucial charging call on Tyshawn Taylor drawn by Mizzou's Michael Dixon, who hit two free throws with 9.8 seconds left to create the final margin of victory.

Some saw that call as debatable on a night KU also was slapped with 20 fouls to Mizzou's 10 and had only nine free-throw opportunities to MU's 20.

In other words, somewhat par for the course on the road in college basketball, perhaps even Allen Fieldhouse.

"I was told I don't want to see the tape," said KU coach Bill Self, responding to a question about calls near the end of the game. "But that goes with the territory. It didn't come down to one call. We had the ball, up (eight), under 3 (minutes), so ..."

Now the Tigers venture back on the road, where they're 3-2 in the Big 12 entering the game at OU. Mizzou is just 21-64 overall in Norman and has lost seven of the last nine there.

For better or worse in this scenario, the Tigers thrashed Oklahoma the first time around, 87-49 on Jan. 3, by shooting 59 percent and holding OU to 33 percent. Afterward, Haith said he wasn't sure MU could play better, and Oklahoma coach Lon Kruger said, "Didn't offer much resistance.''

While the margin seems to indicate MU is significantly better, that was then and this is now — and this is there.

So as they work to get over Kansas, the Tigers also will have to guard against a false sense of security and be ready for at least a prideful response from a Sooner team that is 13-9 overall and 3-7 in Big 12 play.

Confoundingly enough, OU swept Kansas State, one of the two teams to beat Mizzou.

That in itself says MU needs to be focused tonight to make the Kansas game really count in what Kim English called ''a quest'' to win the Big 12 title, one that continues in Columbia on Saturday against Baylor.