Observations: Auburn 101, Chattanooga 66
After a so-so performance the last time out, the Tigers left zero doubt Saturday and cruised to a complete victory on both ends of the floor.
PF Jaylin Williams (Jamie Holt/Auburn Tigers)
Heading into a late Saturday night matchup against Chattanooga, Auburn knew it hadn’t played its true brand of basketball the last time out.
Sure, Auburn beat Alabama State by 20. But the Tigers had a slow start and a sloppy finish, and they finished with more turnovers (18) than assists (14) in a game in which they should have won by much more.
Eight days later, Auburn made it clear that it wasn’t going to have a repeat of that performance — even against a higher-rated small-conference opponent that had already won eight games this season.
“It's human nature just to go in there, play basketball and look forward to seeing your family and stuff like that,” power forward Jaylin Williams said of the Alabama State performance “I feel like that was a big part of that particular game. But I know, coming back, guys were very locked in. When we play against these teams, we know they’re really good. We respect our opponents.”
Auburn raced out to a 12-0 lead Saturday before Chattanooga even came close to hitting a shot from the field for the first time. The Tigers had three assists during that stretch and didn’t turn the ball over a single time.
Johni Broome was dominating his matchup with eight of those points, but Auburn had gotten good offensive plays out of the lower-scoring Chris Moore and Chaney Johnson as well. On defense, all of the Tigers made sure that the visiting Mocs had a difficult time getting to their preferred spots for their free-firing 3-point attack.
“I thought we played really well tonight,” head coach Bruce Pearl said. “We respected our opponent in Chattanooga. That’s a good offensive team, and I thought we did a really good job guarding them.”
By the time the full rotation had gotten into the game and the starters were mixing back into the lineup, Auburn was already up by 21 points. Chattanooga would only get inside a 20-point deficit two more times the rest of the way and found itself down by 39 in the final minutes.
The final result: Auburn 101, Chattanooga 66 — a comprehensive 35-point rout from a team that was favored by 21.
In typical Auburn fashion, everybody ate. All 10 of the Tigers in the usual rotation scored at least five points. All but one of them came up with an assist, and six of them had multiple helpers. They doubled up a much smaller team in rebounds, 46-23, and they finished the game with single-digit turnovers.
“Our kids played well, and they had fun playing together tonight,” Pearl said.
That’s Auburn basketball. And that’s a good-looking tune-up with just one more game to go before the start of SEC play next Saturday at Arkansas.
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 35-point win over Chattanooga, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night.
PF Jaylin Williams (Jamie Holt/Auburn Tigers)
OK, seriously, Jaylin Williams is playing out of his mind
When Jaylin Williams went off for 24 points against Indiana earlier this month, it felt like it could be one of the few supernova games you get in a typical season from the fifth-year senior power forward.
But it turned out to be the sign of something bigger.