The Stretch 4: Auburn has 'so much to play for' in the final week of the season
The Stretch 4: Auburn has 'so much to play for' in the final week of the season
The Tigers are focused on seeding and staying hot at the most important time of the season. That continues Tuesday night at Missouri.
PF Jaylin Williams (Steven Leonard/Auburn Tigers)
The final week of the regular season is upon us, and Auburn’s chances at winning an SEC title are quite small. It could happen, but any such scenario hinges on first-place Tennessee losing to both South Carolina and Kentucky this week first and foremost.
(One of those scenarios, for maximum chaos, finishes with a five-way tie at the top.)
So, outside of a total face plant of a final week for the Volunteers, the Tigers won’t cut down the nets inside Neville Arena this season.
That doesn’t mean they should stop playing like they could, though.
“There is so much to play for coming down the stretch,” Bruce Pearl said Monday. “My focus has primarily been a couple things: One, it’s the last week of the regular season and mathematically speaking, I think we can finish anywhere between the 1 and 6. We’ve been saying that for a while now. We’re still there. Obviously we have to continue to win.
“The second thing is just there’s an awful lot to play for in terms of seeding — both in the SEC tournament and the NCAA tournament, and the ability to advance in tournament play in March. So we’re trying to be at our best right now.”
Auburn also knows it has to stay sharp in the final week of the regular season, even though it has the easiest finish of any top team in the league.
Unlike the rest of the contenders for a double bye in next week’s SEC Tournament, Auburn doesn’t have a Quad 1 game this week. Instead, the Tigers have two Quad 3 games — a trip to Missouri on Tuesday and a home finale with Georgia on Saturday.
Missouri is arguably the most peculiar late-season matchup in recent Auburn history. The black-and-gold Tigers, who made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament last season in Year 1 under Dennis Gates, are 0-16 in SEC play. Their last win came on Dec. 30, against Central Arkansas. They’ve dropped 19 of their last 20.
And yet…
“Missouri has played everybody tough,” Pearl said. “They have not laid down. They have not quit. They play as hard as anyone in the league. They’ve got three great guards that can really score and take over games. It’s Senior Night at Missouri, I can’t imagine the intensity and passion those guys are going to play with to get the victory. But it means a lot to us, too.”
Auburn won’t overlook Missouri, no matter what the record next to its name says.
Besides, as Pearl noted Sunday, the program’s last trip to CoMo came when the Tigers were No. 1 in the country for the first time ever. They narrowly escaped a 55-54 rock fight with a win.
That Auburn team won the SEC. That Missouri team finished 5-13 in league play.
“In the last five minutes of the last five games, they're a possession out in every one of them,” Pearl said of this season’s Missouri team. “We went to Missouri a couple years ago with Jabari (Smith) and Walker (Kessler) and barely got out of there alive. We're going to have to really play well.”
For a deeper dive on Auburn’s matchup with Missouri and where it currently sits in the bracket projections, here’s this week’s edition of The Stretch 4.
SF Chris Moore (Steven Leonard/Auburn Tigers)
With Lior Berman out, Chris Moore is back in
Auburn suffered a tough loss this weekend, as Lior Berman suffered a complete tear of his ACL in the second half of the Mississippi State game.
Pearl said Berman should be able to recover in order to start his professional career in Israel next season, but his time on the floor for the Tigers has come to an abrupt end.
“He meant a lot to our program over the last five years, both on and off the court,” Pearl said. “So disappointed for Lior. He had worked his way into a really good spot in the regular rotation. We had such great confidence in Lior. He’s such a great example of when you don’t always get what you deserve, stay with it. I probably should’ve been playing him more sooner almost every year that he’s been in the program.
“It’s hard to understand. To miss March, he’s worked so hard to put himself in this position.”
When Auburn put Chad Baker-Mazara in the starting lineup at small forward after Jaylin Williams’ short injury absence, former starter Chris Moore found himself behind Berman in the rotation. The move was an offensive-minded one, as Berman scored 14 points over the last three games for the Tigers.
Moore, on the other hand, has only scored 11 points in SEC play this season. While he started 26 games for Auburn as a tone-setter with his defense, rebounding and overall hustle play, Moore has not been a factor on offense during his senior season.
Now, that’s going to have to change moving forward.
“Chris Moore will be back in the rotation,” Pearl said. “I think Chris brings a strong voice and leadership to our team. He’s our best defensive communicator. We’re better defensively with Chris on the floor. Just gotta get him to play with more confidence offensively.
“And I think he will, knowing that he lost some minutes in the rotation and he knows why. He understood. That’ll probably be the adjustment that we make.”
Pearl and several Tigers have recently praised Moore for his attitude and team-first mentality while receiving little-to-no playing time in the rotation shakeup. Last week, Johni Broome said that “every team who wants to make a run in March Madness needs a guy like Chris Moore.”
There’s no questioning Moore’s work as a glue guy for the Tigers. But he hasn’t been a consistent offensive threat since non-conference play last season.
While he might not command heavy minutes behind Baker-Mazara down the stretch, Auburn wants him to tap back into his younger days on the Plains and provide what Berman was giving the team on offense for the rest of March.
“He's one of the toughest guys out there,” Pearl said. “He's a physical player, he's hard to keep off the offensive glass. I just think he'll be really, really hungry to learn from the fact that he was getting minutes starting every game and not taking full advantage of it. I'm confident that he will.”
SG K.D. Johnson (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)