Will Auburn's interior defense punch back again this postseason?
If these title-winning Tigers are going to make any sort of run in March, they'll need to rediscover their defensive edge down low.
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — It usually doesn’t take long for Bruce Pearl to say exactly what’s on his mind after a game.
This is especially true after a loss, where he starts with an interview with Auburn’s radio crew before heading back for the traditional post-game press conference.
Last Tuesday night, after Auburn’s six-game, SEC outright championship-clinching winning streak came to an end with an 11-point loss at Texas A&M, Pearl’s unfiltered thoughts were on display from the very first sentence he said to friend of the newsletter Andy Burcham and anyone listening at home.
“We just got physically punched in the mouth,” Pearl said. “We got physically run out of here.”
Later in the interview, he went a step further.
“You're either going to man up or…” Pearl began, before switching gears. “The scouting report's out. It's out. The best way to beat Auburn is to hit them in the mouth.
“And we're either going to be able to handle the physicality of the play, or we're not.”
A few days later, Auburn lost its second game in a row — for the first time all season — when Alabama hit a buzzer-beating floater to win a finale in overtime.
The majority of the second half and the overtime period of that Iron Bowl of Basketball was, quality-wise, about as good as it gets in the college game. These were two Final Four-caliber teams trading punches, and it went down all the way to the buzzer.
Auburn got a lot of good out of that game, despite the final result. Johni Broome set a career-high in points, smashing completely through what had been an offensive mini-slump. Denver Jones brought back his excellent perimeter defense after missing time with an injury. Several of the Tigers’ guards caught fire with their shots, and Auburn nearly posted a 3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio in a huge game.
But, after the final whistle, the box score showed another troubling statistic that was closely related to what happened earlier in the week at Texas A&M: Alabama scored 52 points in the paint. The Crimson Tide had beaten the Tigers in spite of one of their weakest 3-point outings of the entire season.
“You score 91, should be good enough to win,” Pearl said. “I don't think we defended well enough. We didn't rebound well enough.”
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
Let’s make one thing clear at the outset of this piece: Auburn’s interior defense has not been a season-long problem. In fact, the Tigers are inside the top 35 nationally in 2-point field goal defense, and they’re a top-five squad in terms of block percentage.
Auburn has put together plenty of excellent defensive performances this season. It won the low-scoring thriller against Tennessee with defense. It held three of the SEC’s best offenses — Missouri, Mississippi State and Oklahoma — well below their usual averages in comfortable victories. Both Georgia wins, along with much-needed comebacks against Arkansas and South Carolina, featured huge defensive stretches.
That type of high-level defense, though, hasn’t been as commonplace in the final few weeks of the season for Auburn.