The Stretch 4: Keyshawn Hall is out for Auburn at Arkansas

The Tigers will go for another massive "plus-two" road victory — just without their leading scorer. Here's more on that, plus our full game preview.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — Keyshawn Hall didn’t play for Auburn’s final 12 minutes and 38 seconds of action. He won’t play for the next 40 minutes, either.

Hall, who leads the Tigers and sits at No. 4 in the SEC in scoring with an average of 20.7 points per game, has been ruled out for Auburn’s road game at Arkansas on Saturday night.

The SEC’s official pregame availability report, which was released Friday night, does not list specific reasons for player absences. Auburn head coach Steven Pearl will likely address Hall’s status before the game Saturday on the team’s radio broadcast.

Hall was benched for most of the second half of Auburn’s home loss to Vanderbilt on Tuesday night with what Pearl called “a coach’s decision.” Hall only scored 13 points and missed all eight of his 2-point attempts. He was a team-low -14 in plus/minus.

Pearl opted to play Elyjah Freeman, who was a team-best +8, in Hall’s place at the small forward spot. Auburn cut a large Vanderbilt lead down to four after the change.

“We'd obviously love for Key to close out games for us,” Pearl said Friday, hours before Auburn left for Arkansas. “He's a guy that can get to the foul line and do a lot of great things. When he's in games, we're obviously better.

“The lineup that we had out there cut the lead from 14 to 4, so that group did a really good job of being aggressive defensively and running good offense. It was more of a coach's decision to roll with the guys we had at that time.”

When Pearl was asked about Hall’s response to the benching, the head coach said he wanted to “keep those conversations that we have in-house in the locker room.”

“He's done a good job this year in those areas,” Pearl added. “But those are conversations that we kind of keep private and behind closed doors.”

No matter the reason behind Hall’s absence, Auburn will now have to face an Arkansas team that it beat by 22 at home last month without the player who scored 32 points in that game. Hall went 11-14 from the field, including 4-5 from deep, with five assists in Auburn’s surprising blowout win over Arkansas on January 10.

Arkansas has won six of its eight games since the loss at Auburn, including a 25-point home win over Vanderbilt and now back-to-back blowout road victories over Mississippi State and LSU.

The Razorbacks lost their last game inside Bud Walton Arena, an 85-77 result to Kentucky. But that was the only time in the last six games that Arkansas, which has the nation’s No. 6 offense on KenPom, has been held to less than 83 points.

Arkansas currently sits just one game back in the SEC title race with seven to play. The pressure will firmly be on the side of the home team as Auburn, a projected 7-point underdog, looks to snap a three-game skid with an upset that would be worth a massive +0.80 in Wins Above Bubble. Florida was +0.92, if that tells you anything.

“We've got a chance to go beat a really good Arkansas team again,” center KeShawn Murphy said Friday. “And, this time, it'll be plus-two, because it's on the road. We're comfortable where we are. … We got to go out there and get it done.”

Here is our full game preview for Auburn’s Saturday night showdown at Arkansas, starting with — of course — the impact of Hall’s absence in this particular matchup.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

What Auburn will have to do without Keyshawn Hall