COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri men’s basketball is going somewhere. Perhaps somewhere deep into March. Maybe even somewhere deep in the heart of Texas, where the Final Four will take place in San Antonio.

Very little seems impossible right now for the No. 15 Tigers, who rolled past No. 4 Alabama on Wednesday with a 110-98 shootout win. Mizzou (20-6 overall, 9-4 Southeastern Conference) was unfazed by the Crimson Tide’s persistent perch on the precipice of staging a comeback and unrelenting in its offense.

Sealing the deal against Alabama (21-6, 10-3) only continues to raise MU’s ceiling — and feed imaginations about just how far these Cats from Ol’ Mizzou will dance.

But Wednesday was mostly indicative of a team that has been here before, a noteworthy transformation in this unfolding underdog story. It was the third time this season that Missouri toppled a top-five opponent, and the second time it has done so inside Mizzou Arena.

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A couple of months ago, when this present potential wasn’t just unrealized but realistically unfathomed, the Tigers beat then-No. 1 Kansas on this floor. And then the fans flooded it in rivalrous glee.

Yet in the closing moments of Wednesday’s upset, MU coach Dennis Gates commandeered the in-arena public address system to ask fans to keep off the court. They complied, saving the athletics department the $500,000 fine that would have been levied by the SEC for doing so.

"We need that money to go to NIL," he said. "We don't need to be getting fines out there."

Gates also mentioned concerns about player safety amid a court-storming and his hope that more coaches try to deter the practice. But at some level, his request was a business decision made by a team that is making big wins into a business model.

That’s the difference between the big win then and the big win now. Beating Kansas was catharsis. Beating Alabama was about composure.

The Tigers led for all but 32 seconds of the game, which is how long it took them to open the scoring in the first half. They scored the first 12 points of the game, forcing 'Bama coach Nate Oats into an early timeout. From there, the Crimson Tide never came closer than within six points of their hosts.

It wasn't quite that straightforward for Missouri, of course.

'Bama, led by star guard Mark Sears, shot the ball well — 54% from the field, 42% from 3. Sears dropped 35 points on 12-20 shooting and tried his best to spark a comeback.

After he scored six straight points himself to cut MU's lead to 79-73 with just under 10 minutes to go, the Tigers scored the next nine points to restore a double digit advantage. Sears grabbed a loose ball and fired off an almost instantaneous 3 to make it a six-point game again in the final minute, but MU's Tamar Bates came alive with steals and finishes to ice the result.

Missouri's winning approach, which produced the most points scored in a first half this season, with 59, was a mix of inside and out: power forward Mark Mitchell and sharpshooting guard Caleb Grill.

A week removed from a career night against Oklahoma one week ago, Mitchell eclipsed his mark set against the Sooners with 31 points on 11-15 shooting — and only two misses inside the arc. Grill scored 25 with only three 3-pointers made, feasting at the foul line with 10 made free-throws.

Yet they had an impact on each other's domains, too. A Mitchell 3 early in the first half gave MU a 16-4 lead and seemed to be an indicator of just how proficiently the Tigers were going to score. Grill tied for a game-high 10 rebounds, which seemed to irk Oats.

"For their guard to outrebound us that bad, I just think they wanted it more," the Alabama coach said.

And it's precisely the duality, the strangely blended dichotomy of Mitchell and Grill and Bates that makes this Mizzou team look so dangerous on the horizon of March.

"I think we just have a lot of weapons," Mitchell said. "We can beat you inside, obviously beat you outside. I think that’s probably the hardest thing for teams to game plan."

The Tide also struggled to fully rattle Missouri's composure late. Despite making enough trips for a rewards card to be a worthwhile acquisition, the Tigers went just 31 for 47 at the free-throw line. That prompted Alabama to foul intentionally earlier than it perhaps had to, hoping to pressure MU into letting the visitors back in via free-throw misses. The strategy had merit but the gap was too much to close down that way.

With Wednesday's win in hand, Missouri turns to a home stretch of rather favorable games to close out the regular season. The Crimson Tide were the last program sitting in the top seven of the SEC standings left on MU's schedule, which suggests the Tigers can pick up several more wins between now and the start of the postseason.

That's relevant to their pursuit of a double bye in the SEC tournament, which allows the top four finishers in the conference to enter the league bracket at the quarterfinals stage. Through Wednesday's action, Mizzou sat fifth in the standings — level with Texas A&M at 9-4 in SEC play but trailing to the Aggies because of a head-to-head loss against them.

Therein lies the other part of Missouri's rather remarkable composure: The Tigers are far from caught up in the highs of any given win.

"Whenever you can score 110 points in a game, (with) no overtime, it says we’re continuing to take the steps we need to take, one at a time," Gates said. "I’m proud of the direction we’re going in, as it relates to getting better. I still don’t think our team has played its very best — and they would say the same."

Grill, whom Gates endorsed earlier this week as someone he'll hire as an assistant coach someday, was already digging into the nitty-gritty of potential improvements in the immediate aftermath of the victory.

"I mean, we gave up 98 points, so start there," Grill said. "We got to do a better job of rebounding. There’s still small details that we maybe missed out on. Late in the shot clock, they got a couple 3s off."

Small details are a pleasant gripe to have after another big win. Add that to the signs that Mizzou is headed somewhere promising.

"We’re going in a direction steady, slowly, patiently," Gates said, "and we’re not leaving details behind."

Photos: No. 15 Mizzou men's basketball hosts Alabama