Observations: Florida 90, Auburn 81
The Tigers fell short of their high standards in a number of areas, and they paid for it with a high-scoring home loss to a familiar foe.
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — On Saturday, Bruce Pearl said he could sense this loss coming.
That’s not just a coach talking with the benefit of crystal-clear hindsight, either. He said it just four days earlier, after a blowout win over Oklahoma.
“By the way, we’re going to get beat,” Pearl said. “It’s coming up. We’re going to lose a game — or lose games.”
Auburn had spent the vast majority of its first 22 games of the season playing with an almost superhuman-like focus. The effort levels rarely dropped. The execution stayed crisp. The attention to detail in the scouting report was spot-on.
“We have had greater effort and energy — or at least matched the effort and energy — of every team we played,” Pearl said.
And, because of that, Auburn went through three months worth of basketball with 21 wins and just a single loss on the road at Duke. No one else in the country had come close to the number of quality wins for the Tigers, and no one else in the country had gotten this far with just one defeat. No one else in the SEC was undefeated, either.
But Auburn didn’t keep all that up forever. Some might think it would have been impossible to do so.
Either way, the slip came Saturday at home to a Florida team that was Auburn’s closest comparison in elite balance — yes, even without its second-leading scorer.
“They played harder,” Pearl said after Auburn’s 90-81 loss to Florida. “They played better. They played more desperately. We did not look like the No. 1 team in the country. We didn't act like the No. 1 team in the country. We didn't prepare like it.
“And, as a result, we got beat.”
Saturday was a swift reminder that this current version of the SEC is the toughest conference in modern college basketball history, and that Auburn had been able to fight through the single-hardest schedule in the country for so long by playing up to an incredible standard. And that still came with narrow wins and close calls.
Falling short of that standard, especially against what Pearl called a potential “Final Four team” in Florida, can lead to out-of-character results.
Auburn hadn’t trailed by more than five at home at any point this season. It found itself down by six with 2:41 left in the first half. That grew to 10 by halftime, then to 20 inside the first six minutes of the second half.
“We haven’t been down a lot this season,” senior wing Miles Kelly said.
The nation’s top defense in terms of effective field goal percentage at home this season gave up 90 points Saturday. Florida, a team that doesn’t usually assist at high rates, had 22 on 31 made shots. Auburn hadn’t given up more than 13 in a game this season, and that particular performance came from the nation’s top playmaker.
Meanwhile, Auburn went just 7-22 (31.8%) from 3-point range and missed more than half of its attempts at the rim. The Tigers had four scorers in double figures, but only one of them did it with strong efficiency. And the best-looking offense of the game for Auburn came with Florida up by double-digits.
In the grand scheme of things, Florida needed this win more than Auburn. The Tigers didn’t match that intensity for the majority of the game, and they paid for it on the scoreboard.
“I don't know that I made or had our team understand how important this game was to Florida,” Pearl said. “… If they lose this game, they're four games behind us in the league, alright? Now they're only down two, and they're still in it. I mean, they just came in here like they had to win it. That's how they played their possessions.”
Here are four Observations — along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night — from Auburn’s 8-point home loss to Florida.