COLUMBIA, Mo. — Larry Eustachy’s optimism turned to frustration in just 72 hours as he watched his team drop a 64-59 contest against Missouri.

Missouri forward Travon Bryant knocked down a shot from behind the arc to tie the score at 50 with 6:27 remaining. The basket ignited a 13-0 run and gave the Tigers a 10-point lead with the clock dipping under three minutes. The Cyclones would not recover from the offensive drought.

Eustachy, in his fifth year as head coach, looked as tired as ever after seeing his team’s second-half lead evaporate. He had been optimistic after the Cyclones played within 10 points of No. 5 Oklahoma Saturday.

“That’s as disappointed as I’ve been in a long time,” Eustachy said. “I don’t think we played well throughout the game. This is a team we had a chance to beat and just didn’t have the toughness to do it.”

Despite 54 percent shooting in the first half, Iowa State (10-5, 0-4 Big 12) would need a 7-1 run to make it just a 1-point Missouri lead at the half. Jake Sullivan’s three-point shot from the right wing — his only attempt of the half — capped off the streak with 31 seconds remaining before halftime.

Iowa State picked up where it left off, taking the lead on its first possession after freshman Adam Haluska hit a jumper on the move. The Cyclones would lead by four points on two separate occasions, but could not pull away.

Sullivan’s three-point shot with 12:33 left quieted the crowd, but Missouri’s Arthur Johnson snatched a one-armed rebound and scored on the next trip down the court despite a foul by Jackson Vroman. Johnson, who led the Tigers with 21 points and 11 rebounds, completed the three-point play to start a 7-2 run that gave the Tigers a 47-46 edge.

Besides a lack of toughness, Iowa State had 19 turnovers — including several traveling calls. Haluska, who led the Cyclones with 15 points, said the miscues were his team’s own fault and ended up leading them to a loss.

“Turnovers killed us tonight,” Haluska said. “We can’t turn the ball over in big games like this. We gave them too many offensive rebounds. We just fell apart — that’s the biggest thing.”

Coming close won’t cut it in the Big 12, said Haluska, who has yet to win a Big 12 game. He said the second-half lapse after the 6-minute mark hurt his team.

“We should have won that ball game,” Haluska said. “I thought we were the better team out there. We just didn’t do the little things at the end and Missouri executed. They hit the big shots when it counted and we didn’t.”

Missouri (11-3, 2-1) ended a two-game losing skid with the win. Point guard Ricky Clemons, playing after a one-game suspension for a domestic assault charge, had 15 points as did Rickey Paulding.

“I was pleased with how our kids fought tonight,” Missouri coach Quin Snyder said. “Those are the types of games, as a coach, you work toward — where you’re not shooting well, things aren’t going well, and you need to do other things to win the game.”

Sullivan finished with 10 points and seven rebounds, but also had eight turnovers. Chris Alexander added 10 points on 5-of-6 shooting.

Asked if ISU fatigue might have been the cause of Missouri’s comeback, Eustachy said it wasn’t a factor at all.

“There are a lot of people over there fighting in Afghanistan, ready to go to war, that have been up for 72 hours,” Eustachy said.

“Fatigue is real good terminology, but it means nothing. These guys are young — they could stay up for two weeks and, if their life depended it on it, could have played a better basketball game than we did tonight.”

Eustachy said he’s not going to delve out any sympathy to his players for their difficult schedule to open Big 12 play. The Cyclones have played — and lost to — four straight ranked opponents.

“I’m really tired of the ‘poor me, poor, poor schedule, poor me,'” Eustachy said. “This is the real world. I’m not discouraged but I’m disappointed. Our guys have got to get tougher.”

But Eustachy guaranteed improvement in the future. And with the schedule easing up slightly, a Big 12 win may not be that far away.

“Who knows what we’ll have at the end of the year, but we’re going to have a team that will go down swinging,” Eustachy said. “And right now, we’re not swinging.”