Observations: Auburn 73, Mississippi State 66
The Tigers finally won a game by single-digits, and it was one of their biggest of the season — a dogfight to get to the SEC Tournament final.
C Dylan Cardwell (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Like another crucial win against a team from Mississippi earlier this season, it all started with a fiery halftime speech from an Auburn small forward.
But, this time, it wasn’t Chad Baker-Mazara. It was Chris Moore, the fourth-year player who found himself out of the rotation a few weeks ago.
Auburn was tied with Mississippi State at halftime of an SEC Tournament semifinal, yet it was time to light a fire like when Auburn was down by nine at Ole Miss. The differential on the glass — Mississippi State had more offensive rebounds (12) than Auburn had total rebounds (10) — was more than enough to raise the alarm bells.
So, what did Moore say?
“We had to put our pants on, go out there and show them Auburn basketball,” Jaylin Williams said.
“We've got to put our big-boy britches on,” Chaney Johnson said.
“Pull your britches up,” Dylan Cardwell said. “He didn’t say that, but that’s the PG-13 version. We’ve got to man up.”
You can probably read between the lines there. And, whatever the exact magic words were, they worked.
Auburn out-rebounded Mississippi State by four points in the second half, and the Bulldogs didn’t have any second-chance points until a Tolu Smith dunk with nine seconds left.
Like Williams said, it was Auburn basketball — a total team effort. All nine players who got more than a minute of playing time in the second half had at least one rebound. Eight of them scored. Baker-Mazara and Williams both hit clutch free throws late.
And the spark that sealed the game came from Cardwell. After Mississippi State cut Auburn’s lead to one with 5:01 left, thanks to a ridiculous Josh Hubbard surge, Bruce Pearl called timeout and sent four new players into the game.
Cardwell got a dunk on an assist from Baker-Mazara. He then partially blocked a Hubbard 3-point attempt on a defensive switch near the top of the key. When Williams got the rebound and tossed a lead pass down the floor, Cardwell had to just wait out the smaller Mississippi State guards for another easy dunk.
Prior to that sequence, Cardwell had zero points. That’s depth.
“We're a program that's committed to playing 10 guys double-digit minutes,” Pearl said. “We're a program committed to playing our stars sometimes under 30 (minutes), so that we can be fresh in March and be fresh in the end of the season, at the end of games or the end of halves to be able to make runs.
“It's to have guys like Chaney Johnson or Chris Moore, K.D. Johnson, Dylan Cardwell coming off the bench, just having confidence in those guys — not dropping off, being different. … Yeah, it's hard to have Johni Broome out of the game late, but Dylan was such a factor defensively. … I just don't think a lot of backup centers are going to be in there at that time. We believe in the sum of our parts.”
Mississippi State only got it back to a one-possession game two more times, and those 3-point leads for Auburn were brief.
For a team that hadn’t recorded a win by single-digits all season, the Tigers looked built to handle that type of pressure in March. Starters and reserves alike hit big shots, secured rebounds and made stops.
That’s been the identity of Auburn basketball all season long. Now it’s gotten the Tigers in a position to play for a championship on Sunday against Florida — the only team that has beaten them handily this season.
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 73-66 win over Mississippi State in the semifinals of the SEC Tournament, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Day.