Observations: Auburn 83, NC State 73
Steven Pearl said the product from his Tigers in a 10-point win over a top-35 team "sucked." That surely didn't apply to two of his scorers.
AUBURN — Wednesday marked Auburn’s 75th straight home sellout of Neville Arena.
This fact was not lost on head coach Steven Pearl, who made sure to quickly commend the Tigers’ home crowd — especially for a late 8:15 p.m. weeknight tip.
“We’re so fortunate to be at Auburn and have a fanbase that continually shows up even when the product, like tonight, sucked,” Pearl said.
Pearl said this after Auburn beat a top-35 NC State team by 10 points, by the way.
In fairness, Pearl didn’t think that about the defensive product. NC State entered the game as one of the 10 best offenses in the sport. Auburn held it to season-lows in 2-point field goal percentage, 3-point field goal percentage, offensive rebounding rate, free throw rate and — the big one — points on the scoreboard.
Pearl’s frustration was toward Auburn’s offensive product. Auburn turned the ball over 20 times, the most for the program in a single game in nearly three full years. The Tigers’ assist-to-turnover ratio was 1-to-2. They only got 11 points from their bench, five offensive rebounds and 26 points in the paint.
“We started off doing things we’re not supposed to do: We’re playing off one foot, we’re throwing difficult passes instead of just throwing strikes or singles — for all you baseball fans out there,” Pearl said. “We’re trying to throw freaking home runs and Hail Marys. We can’t do that if we want to beat the best teams on our schedule.
“We’re all very disappointed in how we executed offensively. Twenty turnovers: They shoot 20 more shots than us. If you let a team that’s top 10 in the country offensively shoot 20 more shots than you — I don’t know how the hell we won that game.”
The answer: In addition to strong defense, Auburn had two unstoppable scorers.
Kevin Overton followed up his bounceback performance in the comeback win over St. John’s with a career-high 29 points. Keyshawn Hall continued his SEC-best scoring start to the season with 28 points, tying the most he’s scored at Auburn.
The two combined to go 17-27 (62.9%) from the field, 11-16 (68.8%) from 3-point range and 12-12 (100%) from the free-throw line. They had 57 of the Tigers’ 83 points — including 34 of the 42 in the second half — and became the first pair of Auburn teammates to score 25-plus in a game since Bryce Brown and Jared Harper against Xavier in the 2018 Maui Invitational.
“If it wasn’t for tough shotmaking by KO and Keyshawn Hall, we don’t win that game,” Pearl said after Auburn’s 83-73 win. “Two of our best players bailed us out when we had very poor performances from other guys on our team.”
At one point in the second half, Overton and Hall looked like they were playing a game of H-O-R-S-E against NC State’s highly susceptible perimeter defense. Overton hit multiple 3s from well beyond the arc. Hall hit a wild turnaround triple from the corner to beat the shot clock on a tight sideline out-of-bounds play.
“That was just where the ball was going, I guess,” Overton said. “Shots were falling.”
”He gave me the confidence,” Hall said. “I saw him, and I was like, ‘Oh, shoot. Dang.’ So, they started guarding him, and I was just open.”
Behind Overton and Hall, Auburn had an effective field goal percentage of 72.7%, which was one of its 10 best performances in a single game over the last 30 years. The Tigers went 12-22 (54.5%) as a team from deep, which is a mark they had only beaten twice since Brown and Harper left the program after the 2019 Final Four run.
But the two didn’t want to talk too much about all that went well for them Wednesday night in an 83-73 win over NC State. They knew that, while the victory could turn into a Quad 1 result down the road, doing what they did there could get them in huge trouble on Saturday night at No. 2 Arizona.
“I feel like I’m not super ecstatic about the win, just based on the other details of the way the game went,” Overton said. “Obviously, happy for myself. But, just another day. Got a short turnaround, better team.”
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 10-point win over NC State, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and two Quotes of the Night.
Auburn’s defense “answered the bell”
Entering Wednesday’s game, if you did a little rounding-up for just one in each category, NC State had six players averaging double-digit points per game and shooting 40% or better from 3-point range.