St. Louis-Second-ranked Missouri squeezed past upset-minded Saint Louis 69-67 tonight before 20,602 in a non-conference men's basketball game at Savvis Center. Tigers point guard Wesley Stokes threw in a one-handed shot falling away from 18 feet off the left wing as the horn sounded for the winner.

Saint Louis junior point guard Marque Perry had knotted the game with four seconds remaining on a three-pointer that culminated a Billiken rally from an eight-point second-half deficit. Perry finished with a game-high 20 points.

"We hit a big shot to hit the game and knew if we could get one stop that we were going to overtime," Perry said. "So that last play really hurt. Tomorrow at practice, we'll come out and lift our team spirits to get ready for the next game at Cal."

Missouri claimed the lead 48-46 on freshman forward Najeeb Echols' lay-up at the 12:45 mark. That spurred a 10-2 Tigers' run that saw Mizzou lead 56-48 on sophomore center Arthur Johnson's lay-up at the 7:33 mark. Saint Louis slowly clawed its way back into the game as Perry scored the Bills' last nine points.

The Billikens led throughout most of the first half and enjoyed its largest lead at 21-13 on junior center Kenny Brown's lay-up with 8:32 remaining. After Missouri surged ahead briefly 31-30 on Kareem Rush's basket with 53 seconds remaining, the Billikens closed the half with a 5-0 run on Drew Diener's triple and Josh Fisher's lay-up off a steal. The Bills shot 43.8 percent in the first half and 60 percent from three in building the 35-31 advantage.

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Missouri out-rebounded the Billikens by 13 in the second half to claim a 43-31 edge for the game and out-scored the Bills 42-28 in the paint. The Billikens' defense limited the usually deadeye Tigers to 1-of-10 from three-point range, but Missouri did shoot 46 percent from the field overall. Saint Louis shot 43.1 percent overall and 61.5 percent from threeland.

"We are proud of the way our guys competed," Billikens head coach Lorenzo Romar said. "It still takes the preseason for us to grow up, understand how hard it is to win games and learn the type of sacrifices that need to be made every possession down the floor in order to win games."

Brown was the other Billiken in double figures with 12 points and had his second straight nine-rebound game.

Missouri guard Clarence Gilbert and Rush each had 18 to lead the Tigers, while Johnson chipped in with 14. Stokes' game winning basket was only his second of the night.

The Billikens (2-4) lost their third-straight game on their home floor for the first time since the 1991-92 season. Saint Louis travels to California (4-1) on Thursday before returning home to take on Denver at Savvis on Sun., Dec. 9.