It had to be misery for Missouri during the first and final moments of Monday night’s game in Allen Fieldhouse — especially for Mizzou guard Ricky Clemons.

MU was held scoreless during its first nine offensive possessions on its top rival’s court. And on each trip, the boos for Clemons — who recently served a one-game suspension after being arrested for alleged domestic violence — grew louder.

Finally, the crowd’s chants escalated into a sing-song call of “woman beater, woman beater.”

“I’ve been dealing with it since I came back from the suspension, so I really don’t listen to the fans,” said the junior from Raleigh, N.C., who also said he didn’t see the KU student who wore an “I Love Ricky Clemons” T-shirt and had her eyes painted as if she’d been beaten.

“I just always block them out.”

Clemons and the Tigers did block out the fans and pushed the Jayhawks to the final minutes before Missouri again went cold and missed shots with the game on the line in a 76-70 Big 12 Conference loss.

“I thought we really hung in there,” said Mizzou coach Quin Synder, whose team fell to 13-5 overall and 4-3 in the league.

Despite shooting 55 percent from the field and cutting KU’s 13-point lead to 71-69 with 1:07 to play behind six second-half three-pointers, the Tigers couldn’t forge ahead.

“We were clawing up the whole night,” said MU center Arthur Johnson, who all but erased his embarrassing missed dunk last season in the Fieldhouse with a 14-point, 11-rebound performance. “Maybe if we went ahead …”

It never happened.

After Rickey Paulding’s second free throw cut the deficit to two points with 1:07 on the clock, Kansas sealed the victory with a 5-1 run with free throws by Bryant Nash, Michael Lee and Nick Collison.

“I think we really made an effort to play hard and execute the game plan,” said Paulding, who scored 17 points. “But the same thing as those games (losses to Illinois, Syracuse, Oklahoma State and Texas), we made costly mistakes, quick shots, and they ran on our turnovers.”