BUFFALO, N.Y. | Finally, Missouri can anticipate playing basketball the way Missouri coach Mike Anderson believes it was intended to be played.

Flat out. Up and down the floor to the point of exhaustion. Fast and faster. All of that.

COLUMBIA | Mike Anderson made the smallest correction. No big deal, nobody in the room seemed to notice — and why would they? Except the word choice of Missouri’s basketball coach says so much about where his program is, where it’s been, and where it’s going.

“It’s a great day,” he began in talking of Mizzou making the NCAA Tournament.

Missouri coach Mike Anderson contends that “winning is an attitude. Winning is a habit.”

And so is losing in the NCAA Tournament, a bad habit that Missouri’s first-round opponent, Clemson, has developed since it last won an NCAA Tournament game in 1997.

COLUMBIA | Missouri’s presence in the NCAA Tournament for a second straight March may say more about the Tigers than last season’s run to the Elite Eight and a school-record 31 victories.

“It makes a statement,” coach Mike Anderson said Sunday after the Tigers, 22-10, were placed in the NCAA East Regional as a No. 10 seed. They will play seventh-seeded Clemson on Friday in Buffalo, N.Y.

COLUMBIA | Missouri’s presence in the NCAA Tournament for a second straight March may say more about the Tigers than last season’s run to the Elite Eight and a school-record 31 victories.

“It makes a statement,” coach Mike Anderson said on Sunday after the Tigers, 22-10, were placed in the NCAA East Regional as a No. 10 seed. They will play seventh-seeded Clemson on Friday in Buffalo, N.Y.

Since Missouri earned a bum’s rush out of the Big 12 tournament by last-place Nebraska on Wednesday, every morning for Mizzou basketball fans has begun with a check to see if the Tigers really are still in the NCAA Tournament field.

Every morning the Tigers have been, according to the well-known and relatively unknown bracketologists from Joe Lunardi to Jerry Palm. And the consensus is that the Tigers will be this morning — and when it all becomes official late this afternoon when the field of 65 is revealed.

TEXAS 64

MISSOURI 59