Observations: Auburn 95, Merrimack 57
Elite first-half defense plus elite second-half offense equaled a blowout win. But Steven Pearl wanted to focus on everything else.
AUBURN — Three days after going to overtime with another small-conference team, Auburn beat Merrimack by 38 and covered the all-important projected spread easily.
“Decent response,” Steven Pearl called it.
Auburn’s offense averaged 1.462 points per possession and scored on nearly 70% of its trips down the floor against Merrimack’s unique and tricky zone defense.
“I thought our offense really early was really, really poor, and our execution wasn’t great,” Pearl said.
Auburn’s defense held Merrimack to 28.6% shooting as the visitors only averaged .851 points per possession and scored just 37.3% of the time.
“I think I’m going to watch that film and see a lot of mistakes in the switching that we were trying to do,” Pearl said.
Auburn out-rebounded Merrimack 55-24, marking the first time the Tigers had ever had a margin of 30-plus in a single game against a Division I opponent.
“That’s just a team without a whole lot of size,” Pearl said. “I wouldn’t look too far into that.”
Pearl sounded just as negative after a 38-point blowout Thursday as he did after a 5-point overtime escape Monday — if not more so.
But there’s a reason for that.
“Obviously, I’m never going to complain about a win,” Pearl said. “Just got to use it as an opportunity to get better.”
When you’re a significant favorite like Auburn was in the second game under Pearl, Merrimack isn’t the only opponent on the team’s mind. A new-look Auburn roster will have had just three games together before playing Houston in Birmingham.
That’s the start of a non-conference stretch that features four games against current KenPom top-10 squads, including the top two. Two more non-conference opponents are right around where the Tigers are right now, and there’s a mystery third team waiting for them on the final day of the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas.
“We ran our first couple play calls wrong, we were in the wrong spots,” Pearl said. “And, against a really good team, you’re not going to be able to get away with those types of mistakes. … Against a better team, when you do the things that we did tonight defensively, they’re going to, obviously, make you pay.”
If Pearl is talking like this over a comfortable rout, it’s because he knows his team is capable of even better — and it’s going to need that in the very near future.
But there’s no doubt Auburn improved from Game 1 to Game 2 in the opening week of college basketball season. That upward trajectory won’t be static, because that’s just not how sports teams work. The level of competition will play a major part in that, too.
As long as the arrow is pointing up most of the time, though, the Tigers will still be able to be a highly competitive SEC team in this first season of a new era.
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 95-57 win over Merrimack, including the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and Quote of the Night.
A surge on defense… from an unlikely source
Auburn’s defensive performance on Opening Night against Bethune-Cookman left a lot to be desired. The Tigers gave up a huge number of points in the paint to a team that was smaller than them, and the Wildcats knocked down a dozen 3-pointers.
In a practice between the Monday night opener and the Thursday night follow-up, Auburn players said they got quite the verbal challenge from an assistant coach: Mike Burgomaster, whose speciality is offense.
“He just got on our asses,” said center Emeka Opurum, who made his Division I debut Thursday after a DNP on Monday. “I’ve not seen him that angry.”
“He’s the offensive coordinator!” forward Keyshawn Hall added. “So, if he’s saying something, it’s a problem.”
“He was on our asses,” Opurum repeated. “Sorry.”