COLUMBIA -- The Missouri Tigers showcased an unselfish brand of basketball Thursday night against the Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils.
The Tigers finished with 19 assists and just five turnovers, leading to seven players scoring in double figures and a 111-39 victory at Mizzou Arena.
"Seeing everybody get to eat like that is amazing," Missouri graduate forward Jacob Crews said. "You cheer them on, and everybody wants what is best for everyone here. There's no jealously, everybody is just happy for everyone, and having a program like that is important."
The 72-point margin of victory ties a program record for Missouri, matching a 106-34 win against MacMurray in 1976 and a 111-39 victory against Chicago State in 1995.
"We don't go out there to try and break records like that," Missouri coach Dennis Gates said. "... We just go out to try and give our very best, and I thought our guys did."
The Tigers got going early.
Following a short jumper from Alvin Stedric to give the Delta Devils their only lead of the night at 2-0, Missouri answered with 14 straight points to take a double-digit lead.
The margin never shrank below 10 points again.
"I thought our guys put two halves of basketball together," Gates said.
The Tigers led by as many as 34 points in the first half, which came at 51-17 with less than a minute left.
Leading the charge for Missouri in the first half was its bench production.
Northern Kentucky transfer Marques Warrick, who is the active leader in career points in the country that had just nine points in the first three games, finished 3-for-3 from behind the 3-point line in the first half and scored a team-high 11 points.
Crews, Marcus Allen and Trent Pierce each added six points also as the Tigers entered the break with 35 bench points.
"I've been doing those things for years now, and coming here coach Gates gave me the green light from the recruiting process basically," Warrick said. "Since Day 1, he's told me, 'Let it fly. Shoot whenever you're open, and create for yourself and others too.'"
Coming out of intermission with a 51-19 lead, the outcome was not in question.
But Missouri didn't play like it.
The Tigers opened the second half on a 15-0 run, starting with a Tamar Bates layup and ending with a Caleb Grill layup to extend the lead to 66-19 before the 16-minute mark.
"It was great to see the shots go in, but we have a lot of work to do," Crews said.
Missouri continued to pour it on.
The lead swelled to 50 at 73-23 with about 14 minutes left following a Grill dunk in transition, grew to 61 points with six minutes left after a Warrick 3 and reached 70 at 105-35 with just less than four minutes left after an Aidan Shaw putback dunk.
The Tigers led by as many as 76 at 111-35 with just less than two minutes left following a fast-break dunk from Pierce, but Mississippi Valley State was able to score the game's final four points to create the final margin and tie the biggest margin of victory in program history for Missouri instead of break it.
The Tigers used 14 players in the contest, with Warrick playing a team-high 27 minutes. Freshman Annor Boateng played a career-high 25 minutes in his third consecutive start and Crews saw 21 minutes of game action for the lone other player to have 20-plus minutes.
"It was great to see some of our young guys play the minutes that they played, get some nerves and jitters away from them and ultimately continue to grow in experience," Gates said.
Warrick led Missouri with a game-high 16 points, Grill and Bates were next with 15, Mark Mitchell scored 13, Crews added 11 and Allen and Boateng each chipped in 10 for career-best efforts.
The Tigers finished 37-of-65 (57 percent) from the field, 15-of-31 (48 percent) from 3-point range and made 22-of-35 (63 percent) of their free-throw attempts.
Arthur Tate led Mississippi Valley State (1-2), which is ranked 364th out of 364 teams in the KenPom rankings, with 10 points, and the Delta Devils shot just 27 percent (13-of-48) from the field and finished with 23 turnovers.
Missouri (3-1) will have a seven-day layoff before hosting Pacific at 6:30 p.m. next Friday at Mizzou Arena.