Observations: Auburn 98, Oklahoma 70
The Tigers completed a perfect first half of the SEC gauntlet with a defense-first masterclass... that also nearly reached triple digits on offense.
(David Gray/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — Last weekend, Oklahoma had one of the best halves of offense you’ll ever find in a major-conference college basketball game.
In the second half of a 97-67 win over a ranked Vanderbilt team — one that had beaten Kentucky and Tennessee this season — Oklahoma went 17-21 (81%) from 2-point range and 7-12 (58.3%) from deep. The Sooners scored 61 points after halftime.
For the next 72 hours, that scoring explosion from Oklahoma was in the front of everybody’s mind connected with Auburn basketball. The Tigers knew they were in for a real challenge against the Sooners’ red-hot offense, which was shooting and scoring at some of the best clips in the entire SEC.
On Tuesday night, Oklahoma got back to 61 points. It just didn’t come until there was 3:14 left in regulation.
At that point, Auburn already had put walk-on Blake Muschalek into the game.
Oklahoma went from hitting 17 2-pointers in 20 minutes against Vanderbilt to hitting 18 shots, total, in 40 minutes against Auburn. The Sooners shot 33.3% from the field, which was by far their worst mark of the season. The Tigers stole the ball from them nine times and blocked 11 of their shots.
No disrespect to Vanderbilt. But unanimous No. 1 Auburn is a completely different animal — and Neville Arena is a long, long, long way from Norman.
“We know what we do can really disrupt anyone in the country,” fifth-year senior Chris Moore said after Auburn’s 98-70 win over Oklahoma.
Yes, it’s one thing that Auburn limited one of the nation’s hottest offenses to hardly anything from the field Tuesday night.
It’s another thing that it nearly cracked 100 points against an SEC team that had won three out of its last four games.
The Tigers did that while shooting just 30.8% from 3-point range — and with National Player of the Year contender Johni Broome only scoring two points in a second half that featured an average of 1.543 points per possession.
“Oklahoma is an outstanding offensive team,” Bruce Pearl said. “They really are. Those numbers bear out. They're not an elite defensive team. They just don't have enough size. And so I wouldn't make too much about what we did offensively, you know, other than the fact that I thought we shared it.”
Yes, that is Auburn’s head coach downplaying the fact that his team was a bucket away from the century mark in this particular SEC season.
But dropping 98 at home on a team with a clear matchup disadvantage down low isn’t anything close to a surprise from these Tigers.
Auburn has now hit the halfway point of the toughest conference schedule in the history of modern college basketball with an undefeated league record and just one loss overall. It already has 21 wins. The program has only won more than that in a season just 12 times in the previous 118 campaigns.
That’s this Auburn basketball season: Where the mind-blowing is becoming the norm.
“By the way, we’re going to get beat,” Pearl added Tuesday. “It’s coming up. We’re going to lose a game, or lose games. But our focus is to get better.”
Until that happens, though, the Tigers are making dominance look routine.
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 28-point win over Oklahoma, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night.
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
The defense “cut the head off the snake”… and then some
Last Saturday, Auburn gave up 29 points to Ole Miss top guard Sean Pedulla — including 20 in the second half. Pedulla did a lot of his damage driving to the basket, and that was a chief concern for Auburn heading into this matchup.
Oklahoma’s top guard was Jeremiah Fears, a 6-foot-4 freshman who had one of the highest usage rates in the SEC and a knack for 20-point outings. Fears hasn’t been an efficient outside shooter this season, but he’s been excellent at driving downhill.
“We stressed him in the scout, because the point guard is the one that makes them go,” senior Denver Jones said. “He's one of their leaders. So, cutting the head off the snake — that's one of the things that could really damage a team.”
Auburn then proceeded to cut the head off of the snake, chop up the body and bury it in the backyard.