Observations: Auburn 100, Memphis 71
The Tigers looked different from the beginning of their second exhibition, wrapping up the preseason with another Atlanta win.
ATLANTA — It didn’t take long for Auburn to show that its second exhibition wasn’t going to be like its first one.
Technically, that happened before tipoff Thursday night in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, when Steven Pearl rolled out a five of Kaden Magwood, Abdul Bashir, Keyshawn Hall, Sebastian Williams-Adams and Filip Jović to start against Memphis.
Auburn went with its expected starting five two weeks earlier in Birmingham, when it lost a high-scoring overtime thriller to Oklahoma State. This time, only one projected starter remained: Hall, who was at the 3 instead of his usual spot at the 4.
But that lineup of Hall and four newcomers to Division I basketball opened the game like this: Stop, score, stop, score, stop, turnover, stop, score, stop, score. Just one blemish in an otherwise perfect 9-0 start that forced Memphis to burn a timeout.
A few possessions later, Auburn led Memphis by double-digits. That wouldn’t change for any of the final 35:55 of game time.
In fact, Auburn led by 20-plus for more than half the contest, finishing with a 100-71 thrashing of Memphis in familiar territory.
“Thought our guys responded well to a disappointing performance against Oklahoma State,” Pearl said afterwards. “The last two weeks, we made a concerted effort to clean up a lot of things that hurt us in that first game.”
What’s perhaps even more impressive about the victory is that Auburn’s red-hot start to the first half was upstaged by its even better start to the second half — when the orange-and-navy Tigers went from up 25 to up 35 in just 2:17.
“It was about coming out, punching them in the mouth and not relaxing,” said Hall, who led Auburn in scoring again with a 20-point outing.
Jović threw that punch, somewhat literally, with the first play after halftime. The 6-foot-8 Eastern European import drove down the lane from the top of the key and crammed a one-handed jam over a lunging Memphis 7-footer, sending Auburn’s bench into celebratory shockwaves.
Auburn stretched its lead over Memphis to 36 at one point in the second half. Pearl’s Tigers didn’t finish the game as well as they started it, getting whistled for 21 fouls and allowing 13 offensive rebounds after halftime. But most of that happened in a disjointed, stop-start final quarter of action in which Auburn went deep into its bench.
“I’ll watch 30 minutes of film and see that we checked out pretty well for 30 minutes,” Pearl said. “The last 10 minutes, though, we reverted back to what we were doing in the summer.”
Still, Auburn left the home of the Atlanta Hawks with another blowout victory to its name, even if this one doesn’t count in the record books.
It’s foolish to read too much into exhibition results. For example, Kentucky torched preseason No. 1 Purdue a few days ago. When Auburn was routing Memphis, though, Kentucky was getting beaten soundly by a Georgetown team that barely cracked .500 last season.
But what Auburn wanted to see Thursday night was simple: No matter how good or how bad Memphis might be, did this team learn its lessons from the first exhibition loss and show something different heading into the regular season?
The answer to that question was as emphatic as Jović’s dunk.
“I feel like we locked in, because we didn’t want the sour taste of the Oklahoma State game in our mouth,” Hall said.
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 29-point exhibition win over Memphis, along with Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night.
That was much more like it on defense
Can a group of teammates trust each other too much? Hall thinks so.