The two biggest problems Auburn basketball has to fix vs. Kentucky

In order to snap this losing streak and get a much-needed win, the Tigers can't let the Wildcats capitalize on these two problem areas.

(Addi Ray/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — For Auburn basketball, Wednesday was nothing short of a gut punch.

Auburn rallied from down 18 points early in the second half to up by seven with several minutes to play, only to watch everything unravel late in a road loss to a Mississippi State team that had entered with a losing record.

Steven Pearl called it “devastating” and “the worst loss” he had experienced during his time on the Auburn bench. The Tigers’ 12th loss of the season — and their fifth in a row — was one that did some real damage to its NCAA Tournament resume.

With only two full days to prepare for Saturday night’s game against Kentucky, Auburn got right back to work in Neville Arena on Thursday. And the vibe at practice probably wasn’t what you would expect, given the Tigers’ February fall down the standings.

“This has been a resilient group,” Pearl said Friday. “We had a great practice yesterday. If you were in the building, the energy was like we had won five in a row. It's commendable. … I think the reason why there's good energy is because they recognize that we're more than capable if we can just finish.

“That's what we've got to do in these last five games — finish possessions. We've got to finish games.”

This first season under Pearl has been a frustrating one in terms of the on-court results. Auburn would have to now win four of its final five games of the regular season to avoid its first losing SEC record since the ill-fated COVID season of 2021.

The lows have been lower than usual, but the highs have still been high. Wins over the likes of Florida, St. John’s, Arkansas and NC State illustrate that the Tigers are definitely tournament-quality when they’re playing well. They have also refused to let double-digit leads from opponents doom them to blowout losses in SEC play.

Auburn just has to, simply put, start winning again.

“I think they have a full awareness and understanding of the urgency of how we’ve got to play — and how we have to put our backs up against the wall and play desperate these last five to put ourselves in position to do a lot of the things that we set out to do at the beginning of the year,” Pearl said. “While we're sitting here at 14-12, and we're not in as good a spot as we'd like to be, we still are in position to accomplish a lot of the things that we talked about and we set out to earlier in the year.”

With the pressure mounting and bubble status looming, Auburn’s next chance at ending this losing skid comes in a primetime showdown with Kentucky on Saturday.

While Kentucky isn’t the ultra-dominant SEC bully of yesteryear and has lost back-to-back games coming into this, it has put together some good wins of its own: A season sweep of Tennessee, a road victory at Arkansas, an even bigger result over St. John’s.

Auburn is slight home favorite — both in Las Vegas and in the analytics systems — over Kentucky. There truly is no time like the present for the Tigers to end their losing streak and start finding a way to build up momentum toward March.

“I think they’ve done just a good job of blocking out the noise and trying to stay present in what we’re doing — and recognizing that there are a lot of things that we’ve got to get better at,” Pearl said. “Mainly, we’ve got to let the opposing team’s best players beat us, and we’ve got to stop getting off to slow starts.”

Those two main problems that Pearl identified Friday are perfect areas for focus ahead of Auburn’s showdown with Kentucky, because Mark Pope’s team still has plenty of ways to take advantage of those issues.

To get you ready for tonight’s AUTLIVE game between Auburn and Kentucky, let’s dive deeper into those two areas in which the Tigers have to improve ASAP in order to beat the Wildcats and get closer to locking down a spot in March Madness.