Observations: Auburn 95, Bethune-Cookman 90 (OT)
The Tigers struggled in a scare to start the Steven Pearl Era. Good thing this new-look team still has 30-plus more games to grow together.
AUBURN — When Auburn’s players returned to the bench before overtime Monday night, they might have expected fire and brimstone from Steven Pearl.
Auburn should have never been in this position on Opening Night. It was favored by more than 20 points over Bethune-Cookman. The Tigers needed a stop-score-stop-score-stop sequence to take a late lead in the final minute of regulation.
Then, up by four, Auburn gave up a 3-pointer with 4 seconds left. After a pair of free throws, an undisciplined and clear-cut foul on a half-court heave gave Bethune-Cookman a chance to send the game into overtime.
It was a late-second collapse on a night when Auburn never led by more than two possessions and spent more than 10 minutes trailing to a sub-200 KenPom team. There was a deflated feeling in Neville Arena, and Bethune-Cookman had the energy.
But, instead of anger, Pearl met his players with positivity.
“I just smiled at them and was just like, ‘This is awesome. We get to play free basketball. We get to play five more minutes of Auburn basketball,’” Pearl said. “That was the only five minutes of the game we played Auburn basketball.
“You’ve got to keep it light and lively in those moments. They can’t see you sweat.”
Five minutes of game time later, Pearl walked off the floor as a winner for the first time as the full-time head coach of Auburn men’s basketball with a 95-90 overtime win over Bethune-Cookman.
Pearl got the game ball in the locker room. Earlier in the day, a dozen of his closest friends surprised him by showing up to the game unannounced. Pearl choked up when talking about it.
Still, the first-year head coach didn’t want to spend too much time reflecting on the feelings of a milestone first win. Not when Auburn allowed a SWAC team to shoot more than 50% from the field, hit a dozen 3-pointers, score nearly half of its 90 in the paint and block eight shots on a night when the hosts went just 26% from deep.
“It’s good to learn from these games in a win as opposed to a loss,” Pearl said. “But we’ve got a long way to go.”
In several ways, Auburn’s overtime escape against Bethune-Cookman felt like its exhibition loss to Oklahoma State — another game that needed extra time — several weeks earlier instead of the blowout win over perennial NCAA Tournament team Memphis in Atlanta just four days ago.
Auburn struggled stopping drives to the basket throughout the night. Bethune-Cookman knocked down 3-pointers that could have been defended better. The Tigers, like they did in Birmingham, couldn’t get going from 3-point range and stagnated at times on the offensive end of the floor.
“Yeah, I think we definitely got into some of our bad habits that we reverted back to from Oklahoma State,” said freshman forward Sebastian Williams-Adams. “But I think this team is one where we’ll get back on track. We’ll watch the film. I mean, SP is very honest with us.”
One thing about habits is that they can be broken, and Auburn has literally an entire season to break them to create new, positive ones.
But another thing about habits is that they can stick around for a long time, and they can soon turn into unshakable, consistent issues.
The good news for Auburn is that this is almost a completely clear slate of a basketball team. Eight of the nine players on the floor Monday night weren’t here last season. The head coach is a first-timer, and others have been shifted into new roles.
This team was never going to be the ultra-experienced, legendary squad from last season that put college basketball on notice the first week of the season and rode that momentum all the way to the Final Four.
This team is going to be something different, something new, something unpredictable. There will be highs. There will be lows.
And, if the comeback finish to Game 1 is any indication, this squad looks ready to attack the unknown challenges in the weeks and months to come.
“I’ve always been on the opposite side,” said center KeShawn Murphy, a transfer from Mississippi State. “So, like stretching with these boys, wearing orange, looking up at the crowd, Neville Arena — I’m excited man.
“And, hats off to Coach Pearl. Many more wins to come, many more things to learn. War Eagle, man.”
Here are five Observations from Auburn basketball’s 95-90 overtime win over Bethune-Cookman, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and Quote of the Night.
The defense took a step back from last week
Auburn went from struggling on defense against an Oklahoma State team not expected to make the NCAA Tournament to playing quite well on that end of the floor against a Memphis team that almost always goes dancing.
The home opener against Bethune-Cookman — a team picked to win the SWAC but not known as one of the top small schools in the country — was more of the former instead of the latter.
But it wasn’t like Auburn didn’t respect Bethune-Cookman. The Tigers knew the dangers that the Wildcats’ roster presented, even if they were without projected top player Doctor Bradley. And they knew they couldn’t coast on what they did last week.
“These are guys that honestly could probably be at SEC level,” Williams-Adams said. “Most people will overlook this team and think, ‘This is Bethune-Cookman, we never even heard of Bethune-Cookman.’ But they are a good team, and we gave the utmost respect. Leading up to this game, we knew that, even if we punched them in the mouth, it was not going to be easy. And they kept fighting and took us to overtime.
“And, I mean, it’s definitely a wake-up call because we can’t go back to our old habits against Oklahoma State. But I don’t think it was necessarily a wake-up call because we were sniffing our own butts and thinking about how good we are, just because we beat Memphis.”