Observations: Missouri 84, Auburn 74

In a big letdown of a road loss, Steven Pearl's Tigers learned the hard way that they're "not good enough to just show up" this season.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

COLUMBIA, Mo. — A little more than halfway through his first regular season as a head coach, Steven Pearl is staring down a major challenge for him and his team.

No, it’s not a single opponent. Auburn has already faced some of the best of the best in the country: Arizona, Michigan and Purdue. It’s not even the grind of SEC play, where eight weeks of almost constant basketball can make or break a campaign.

The challenge is internal instead of external, and it’s rather straightforward: What is it going to take for Auburn to play hard for all 40 minutes, night in and night out?

“We're not good enough to just show up,” Pearl said Wednesday night. “We have to be excited to play every single night and play with the same effort and energy we did Saturday against Arkansas.”

After two heartbreaking losses to start SEC play, Auburn put together its best performance of the season in that 22-point victory over Arkansas. The opportunity was there for the Tigers to follow that up with a good road performance at Missouri.

But the same team that banded together before Arkansas and vowed to give its fans what it deserved with an all-out showing in a victory didn’t show up four days later.

“We probably lost this game before we even got here,” Pearl said after an 84-74 loss. “Just didn't have great body language today in shootaround and film. I'm going to try to figure out and understand why that is. That's gotta be me. I've got to do a better job of getting our guys into the right mindset.

“But we need some leadership on this team to step up and understand that we only have 14 conference games left. This thing goes by quickly. We've got to take advantage of every opportunity, and we didn't do that tonight.”

That starts with Pearl, who has been working to find ways to develop consistency in all areas with a team with little continuity. He took the blame Wednesday, saying he has “to do a better job as a coach… because we can’t come out flat like that.”

The primary responsibility is on Pearl as the head coach, followed by his staff. Still, the Tigers also need players to step up as much more consistent leaders in adverse spots.

Auburn thoroughly beat an Arkansas team with more talent, size and experience over the weekend by out-executing and out-working it. Missouri was more equitable in talent but still had a size and experience edge.

Instead of repeating what had gotten them that win, the Tigers wasted a chance to further a potential turnaround. The fight in the final minutes was too little, too late.

“We’re not good enough to not be the more excited team and the team that plays with the most effort and energy,” Pearl said. “In order for us to win these types of games, that’s how we have to play. Incredibly surprised and, obviously, disappointed in myself for not being able to get them up and excited to play a really good team.”

There were plenty of aspects of this 10-point loss at Missouri that went wrong for Auburn on the floor — the lackluster offensive execution, the brutal night for the top two scorers, the defensive breakdowns — and we’ll go through them in this newsletter.

However, by far the biggest takeaway from this game is that Auburn let itself down more than anything else Wednesday. It would be one thing to play a hard-fought game for 40 minutes and just get beaten by the better team on the night.

That’s not the whole story here. Auburn is going to look back at this disappointing loss at Missouri as a case of what happens when you don’t do what you’re supposed to do in the big areas that have nothing to do with the opponent.

Until the Tigers develop consistency there, they’ll have a hard time getting through the next 14 games and making it back to the NCAA Tournament.

“It's hard enough to win on the road,” Pearl said. “We can't make it more difficult on ourselves like we did tonight… We have some things, internally, we have to fix.”

Here are three more big Observations from Auburn’s 84-74 loss at Missouri, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and Quote of the Night.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

It’s hard to win when your top two guys play like that

The most telling statistics from Auburn’s loss to Missouri were the ones on offense from Keyshawn Hall and Tahaad Pettiford — the Tigers’ top two players this season.