Marshall Brown is one of the most physically gifted players on the Missouri Tigers basketball team.

Not that you would know it by his performances so far this season.

But Sunday afternoon, the 6-6 sophomore came through for the Tigers when they needed him most in a 74-71 win over the Kansas State Wildcats at Mizzou Arena.

"I wanted to go out and show (interim head coach Melvin Watkins) I was the player he believed I was capable of being," Brown said.

Watkins said he challenged Brown.

"I´ve gone back and looked at Marshall´s lines and they´re just not good enough," Watkins said. "And Marshall understands that."

Brown´s biggest play came with :28 left. With Missouri nursing a 70-68 lead, Brown rebounded the second of two missed free throws by teammate Jimmy McKinney and was fouled.

Brown then hit two free throws to push Missouri´s lead to four. Brown finished with 18 points, including going 8-of-10 from the free throw line. He also had four rebounds and four assists.

Brown was one of four Tigers in double figures, the type of effort Watkins was looking for in his first game since stepping in for Quin Snyder.

"If you don´t have more than one or two players making a contribution, you´re not going to win basketball games," Watkins said. "You need five, six or seven players contributing, that´s when you´re going to win a game.

"We had guys making plays."

And while the win snapped a six-game losing streak for the Tigers (11-11 overall, 4-7 Big 12), it wasn´t a thing of beauty. Tigers can´t change their stripes and these Tigers still looked like the old Tigers for spurts Sunday.

"We tried to tweak a couple of things," Watkins said. "Some of it worked OK, a lot of it didn´t.

"It´s refining some of the things we do and just try to get better. We´ve got to try to get good at something, one or two things at least."

One thing the Tigers can control is their attitude on the court.

"Nobody pays to see players be miserable," said Watkins, who glad-handed with students courtside both before and after the game. "We need to play with passion and the people with respect that. If we´re not good enough, we´re not good enough. But we´ve got to give the people that effort."

A 79-64 loss at Kansas State started Missouri´s six-game slide, all double-digit losses. But the Tigers led for much of the game and a 3-pointer by McKinney gave Missouri a 31-29 halftime lead.

The Tigers led by as many six points in the second half before the Wildcats used a 12-6 run to tie the game at 49 with 9:27 to play. Missouri took the lead for good with just over three minutes to go on a pair of Brown free throws that made it 66-64.

McKinney added 16 points for the Tigers, while Kevin Young had 14 and Thomas Gardner 11.

David Hoskins finished with a game-high 20 points for the Wildcats (13-8, 4-6). Cartier Martin added 19, while Hickman graduate Lance Harris came off the bench to score 18.

Missouri is off until Saturday afternoon, when the Tigers will travel to Kansas to take on the Jayhawks. Game time is 2:45 p.m. (KRCG-TV).