Observations: Auburn 101, Missouri 74
Another sizzling second half led to another 100-point performance from the Tigers — who continue to play well at just the right time.
C Johni Broome (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
COLUMBIA, Mo. — There are a bunch of adjectives that describe Auburn men’s basketball this season.
But one of the best — and perhaps the most underrated — words you could use for these Tigers is resilient.
Take a tough loss? Bounce back with an impressive win.
Have a rough half? Follow it up with one that flies off the statistical charts.
Get on the wrong side of the whistle? Play through it to the point that the referees don’t really even matter.
Develop a not-so-good trend in the season? Flip it around at the right time.
Auburn has done all of that again and again this season — and it repeated some of it Tuesday night at Missouri.
It’s what has made the Tigers an analytics darling, and it’s what has made them win 76.7% of their 30 games to date.
On Tuesday night, Auburn knew it was in for an unusual test against Missouri. While the hosts hadn’t won a game since the calendar flipped to 2024 and had a glaringly large zero in its SEC record, the visitors were made well aware of the close call that Tennessee in Mizzou Arena just two weeks ago.
“That team has absolutely not packed it in,” Bruce Pearl said Tuesday night. “They came out here tonight to beat us. They played inspired basketball. They obviously gave us everything we wanted in the first half.”
In that first half, Auburn shot just 37.5% from the field and 14.3% from deep. It had just six assists to four turnovers, while Missouri hit four 3-pointers and made a living at the free-throw line. At halftime, Auburn was only up by five — and the small but vocal home crowd was getting back into it.
But Auburn didn’t stay the same in the second half. It reeled off a 7-0 run that grew into a 10-2 one inside the first three minutes.
“Going in, we usually struggle and start our halves off really badly,” Jaylin Williams told SEC Network afterwards. “BP, in the locker room, was on us about that pretty hard — and we just are tired of hearing it at this point. We had to make some changes.”
After that run, Missouri briefly cut it back to a single-digit lead. Then Auburn scored 46 of the game’s final 74 points to secure yet another blowout victory — this one to the tune of 101-74.
For the third time in seven seasons, Auburn will finish the SEC regular season with a winning road record. (Only Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee have joined Auburn in accomplishing that feat.)
Just ahead of the all-important postseason, Pearl’s team has killed off a narrative about winning away from home.
“Neville Arena deserves a lot of credit,” Pearl said. “The Jungle deserves a lot of credit for having a great home-court advantage — maybe the best in college basketball. But, sometimes, what comes along with that is we can't win away from Neville Arena. And that's just not been the case.”
Sure, Missouri was far from the ultimate test of Auburn’s resiliency — or its ability to get victories outside of the friendly confines.
But no one had scored that many points on Missouri all season, and no one had beaten Missouri by that much this season. Also: No Auburn team has had four 100-point games in a single season in 30 years.
Those superlatives seem to be following the Tigers around an awful lot. There might be something to all of it.
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 101-74 win at Missouri, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night.
PF Jaylin Williams (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
What made Auburn’s second half so sensational
Auburn hanging half of a hundred in 20 minutes of basketball is nothing new this season. Tuesday night marked the 11th time these Tigers have done it, including seven times in SEC play alone.
They’ve also done it away from home, too. The second half at Arkansas was a tone-setter for what would turn out to be a strong conference slate. The second half at Ole Miss turned a deficit into a comfortable win. And the second half at Georgia featured some of the best shot-making of the season.
But none of them had quite hit the raw point total of this one. Auburn scored a season-high 57 points in the second half. While the Ole Miss outburst has this one beat in points per possession and overall scoring rate, Auburn shot even better from the field at Missouri.
And this was coming off a first half in which Auburn scored 44 points, but it had to do a chunk of its damage from the free-throw line. The overall offensive play wasn’t very efficient, either.
“I actually thought that we settled, and it looked like everybody had the green light,” Pearl said. “Like, everybody had the green light. And we took the first open shot that we got. I didn't think we really did a very good job of finding each other and making the extra pass.”
Then Auburn lit up the scoreboard with fantastic offensive basketball in the second half. No play showcased that more than K.D. Johnson throwing a behind-the-back pass to Tre Donaldson for a corner 3 that put Auburn up by double-digits for good.
“I thought we played more unselfishly offensively in the second half,” Pearl said. “We only had, like, six assists in the first half. We finished with 16. Great balance. Almost seven guys in double-digits. We play best when everybody contributes. It was really positive.”
In the second half alone, eight different Auburn players scored. Seven of them had at least five points. Four of them had at least eight points. Five recorded assists, and three of them had multiple dimes. Auburn went from shooting well off-target from deep in the first half to knocking down a nice six of nine in the second half.
“We're getting really good looks,” Pearl said. “Again, the difference in the second half was spacing and sharing the ball.”
Everything went so well for Auburn, the 100-point night was sealed with another Dylan Cardwell 3-pointer. He is now 4-9 for his career, including 3-6 this season.
But that entertaining last-minute highlight was just part of what the big man did with his fellow frontcourt stars on Tuesday.