Observations: Michigan 102, Auburn 72
These new Tigers got a taste of the program's old medicine in Game 2 at the Players Era, struggling to execute against some on-fire Wolverines.
LAS VEGAS — Lopsided results in Auburn basketball games that were expected to be highly competitive aren’t anything new.
It’s just that it had been a long time since the Tigers were on the losing end of one.
How long? When Auburn lost by 30 to Michigan on Tuesday night in the Players Era Championship, it had been 84 games since it had lost by a margin that large — February 25, 2023 at Kentucky.
And when the Tigers found themselves down by more than 20 a half earlier, it had been 152 games since they had faced a halftime deficit that large — February 23, 2021 against Florida.
Michigan handed Auburn a loss like Auburn had handed to so many teams over the last severals seasons. The Wolverines operated with peak efficiency on offense, assisting on more than half of their made baskets and shooting well from everywhere. They also made life extremely tough on defense with their size, length and experience.
It’s not breaking news of any kind: This isn’t the same Auburn team from the last couple of seasons. The Tigers have a virtually brand-new roster and lack the same bulk that they’ve enjoyed recently.
“We’re a team of 10 new guys that we’re still trying to figure things out, and we played like it tonight,” Auburn head coach Steven Pearl said afterwards.
But that doesn’t completely excuse the way Auburn played Tuesday night.
“A lot has to do with them,” Pearl said. “A lot of that has to do with a lack of execution offensively and defensively.”
Auburn got out-executed and out-worked by Michigan, which is a deadly combination against a team that beat a preseason top-30 team by 40 one night earlier.
Everywhere you look on the stat sheet, you can find evidence of that: Auburn was -16 in rebounds, -16 in assists, -18 in points in the paint, -11 in second-chance points and -26 in fast-break points. Those margins were even larger until the final few minutes.
“Nobody represented Auburn basketball today,” forward Filip Jović said. “We need to change that tomorrow.”
In many ways, Michigan was a perfect storm of an opponent for Auburn. The Wolverines are huge, veteran and deep. The Tigers aren’t as much of those three attributes as it has been recently.
The Wolverines have so much pure talent and such a well-regarded offensive system under Dusty May that makes the limited prep time and one-day turnaround even tougher to handle. Michigan might also give Houston a serious run for their money in terms of the analytics defensive title this season.
“I told these guys, this is by far the best team we’ve played, by far,” Pearl said. “That’s not me being disrespectful to Houston or Oregon. Michigan is the real deal when they play at that level.”
But the thing that will frustrate Pearl and his team the most from this 30-point loss is how easy Michigan made it look. Even if the result still ended in a loss due to a fantastic Michigan performance, Auburn could have offered more resistance.
“We have got to do a better job of executing what we’re doing to make it tough on them,” Pearl said. “They were just comfortable for 40 minutes tonight. They were comfortable for 40 minutes last night. You’ve got to make that team uncomfortable to be able to bother them. But we didn’t do a good job of that at all.”
Pearl has praised his Auburn team for the way it’s responded to adversity this year: His father’s preseason retirement, the opening exhibition loss, the agonizingly close defeat to an elite Houston team in a virtual home game.
Now the Tigers will have to fight to make sure one blowout loss doesn’t cost them even more games in the near future. It will be a big challenge just a few games into Pearl’s head coaching tenure. The leadership of a new-look team will be tested.
“We can either stand down or we can take accountability and do something about it,” center KeShawn Murphy said. “We know what happened. We knew what went wrong early. And SP talks about it a lot: This doesn’t define anything. We just come in and move forward. We’ll wash this off our shoulders and get better.”
That opportunity will come with another one-day turnaround against another loaded and deep team in St. John’s — whose head coach has won nearly 900 college games. It’ll be Game No. 8 for Pearl, who will have faced Final Four coaches in four of those.
Hey, it’s Vegas. Call it the “luck” of the draw.
Here are three big Observations from Auburn’s 102-72 loss to Michigan, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and a scouting report on a strong St. John’s team.
Auburn lost on the inside, on both ends
Auburn was well aware of the advantage Michigan could have up front, starting with 7-foot-3 center Aday Mara and continuing into a pair of 6-foot-9 stars in Yaxel Lendeborg and Morez Johnson.
Michigan really made that count on both offense and defense.