Observations: Arizona 97, Auburn 68
“Don’t think we’ll go into a tougher environment against a better team the rest of the year, which is probably one of the only positives you can take away."
TUCSON, Ariz. — Auburn basketball knew what it was getting into Saturday night.
Steven Pearl and his Tigers had less than two full days to truly prepare for Arizona after a late Wednesday night win over NC State in the ACC/SEC Challenge. Then they had to travel across the country, where they would enter their game as a double-digit underdog for the first time in nearly three whole years for the program.
Meanwhile, Arizona — a team boasting some of the most size and pure talent in all of college basketball — had a full week to prepare for this home game. In fact, the Wildcats had played back-to-back sub-200 KenPom teams since beating UConn on November 19. Auburn had played twice as many games, all against high-majors.
“We put our guys in a tough spot there,” Pearl said Saturday night. “But we knew it was on the schedule, and we knew what was coming. We told our guys, ‘Man, we’re gonna have to have a lot of step-up.’
“And we didn’t have that tonight.”
For the second time in four games, Auburn struggled mightily against an elite opponent. In many ways, Auburn’s 97-68 loss to Arizona in Tucson on Saturday night looked a lot like its 102-72 loss to Michigan in Las Vegas a week and a half earlier.
Auburn was -16 in assists against Arizona — the exact differential from the Michigan game. The rebounding gap wasn’t as large (-16 to -6), but the points in the paint (-18 to -36) was a major difference, because Arizona relies much more on 2-pointers.
Granted, Michigan and Arizona are going to be the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the country in the next Associated Press Top 25 poll. And Auburn just doesn’t have the same amounts of height, experience and continuity as those two juggernauts.
“We’ve played the two best teams in college basketball,” Pearl said. “And I think there’s a pretty wide margin between Michigan, Arizona and the rest of college basketball — just from what I’ve seen on film and just obviously what we’ve experienced in person.”
It would be one thing if Auburn played a quality game against a team like Arizona and still lost, much like it did when it fell to Houston by 1 in Birmingham.
But, like the loss to Michigan, Auburn walked away from its lopsided loss to Arizona knowing that the result on the scoreboard wasn’t just a measurement of how good the other team is.
“For us to be able to compete against this upper echelon, we’ve got to play Auburn basketball — which is fly around for 40 minutes and play with your hair on fire,” Pearl said. “We only did that in pockets tonight.”
To Pearl’s point, Auburn led by 5 early. And, after Arizona took a 20-point lead with 2:07 left in the first half, Auburn fought back to make it a 12-point game at the break.
But the second half quickly got away from the Tigers, who missed quality chance after quality chance. That was a running theme for Auburn, which didn’t get much offense outside of a career-best 30-point outing from a sensational Tahaad Pettiford.
“You’re gonna look back at the film in the first five possessions, and we got really clean looks, and we just missed every single one of them,” Pearl said. “And they made five straight shots. If you make three or four of those, it’s a different ballgame. We’re still kinda in there.
“But that’s how the swing of the first five minutes of the second half started. When you get into a hole against a team like Arizona, you’re not gonna climb out of that.”
An 18-2 start to the second half for Arizona put Auburn away for good. As Pearl said, it was going to take “special” for the Tigers to have a shot in this extremely difficult matchup — and they just didn’t produce that.
“Don’t think we’ll go into a tougher environment against a better team the rest of the year, which is probably one of the only positives you can take away from that,” Pearl said.
Here are three big Observations from Auburn’s 29-point loss at Arizona, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night.
