Observations: Oklahoma 91, Auburn 79

The Tigers didn't do the things they said — and knew — they needed to do to beat the Sooners. Now they're on full-blown Bubble Watch.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

NORMAN, Okla. — If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then Auburn basketball’s early defense these days is worthy of a straitjacket.

On the very first possession of the game Tuesday night at Oklahoma — when the players’ legs should be the absolute freshest and their retention of the scouting report should be the absolute sharpest — Auburn gave up an open 3-pointer.

It was a triple from Nijel Pack, the sixth-year senior who leads the SEC in 3-point percentage and has shot above 40% from deep across his career. The few times Oklahoma has won in league play, Pack has usually been a game-changing sniper.

And Auburn let Pack get a clean look for three points before it even touched the ball.

“The first play of the game, Tahaad (Pettiford) just falls down,” head coach Steven Pearl said. “First possession, Nigel Pack comes off and hits the 3. It’s like the sixth game, almost in a row, where we’ve just had a defensive mistake.”

The real answer isn’t that much better than Pearl’s estimation. This was the fifth time in the last nine games in which an Auburn opponent hit a 3-pointer on the opening possession. The Tigers are now 1-4 in those games, with the lone win coming in the very first one of the stretch: A seismic road victory at Florida.

In those four losses — Alabama, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State and Tuesday’s 91-79 letdown at Oklahoma — opponents have combined to go a jaw-dropping 49-95 (51.6%) from 3-point range.

“When they make a shot, we can say it until we’re blue in the face, teams are going to get confidence in those situations,” Pearl said. “I’m at a loss for answers as to why we just continue to allow that to happen.”

Pack’s opening 3-pointer, like the kickstarters against Auburn that came before it, felt like a bad omen of what was to come. After all, Kentucky didn’t hit its first triple until several minutes into the game on Saturday and only shot 6-23 (26.1%) from deep.

Auburn won that game, because defense has been the barometer of success for this team in SEC play. Per KenPom, the Tigers entered the game 1-8 when their defensive efficiency was above 120.0 for a game, and 5-0 when it was below that mark.

Oklahoma had an offensive efficiency of 137.2, which was the second-worst mark for Auburn on the defensive end — only ranking behind the blowout loss to an ultra-elite Michigan back in November. Oklahoma isn’t even close to an NCAA Tournament team.

But the Sooners shot 13-19 (68.4%) from 3-point range, which was the worst percentage the Tigers had allowed in a game in 15 years. Pack went 6-8 from there.

“I’m always going to sit here and be accountable for what I’ve gotta do better,” Pearl said. “But we’ve got to stop with just the mental errors defensively on things that we’re just repeatedly talking about and trying to emphasize as being important in the game.”

Pearl estimated that eight of Oklahoma’s 10 made 3-pointers in the first half were results of “bad mistakes” from Auburn’s defense. He said that the Tigers helped off shooters versus penetration multiple times, despite having “15 clips in film” where they were told not to do that. He also saw too many hands-down closeouts.

Auburn combined this brutal defensive showing with plenty of offensive mistakes. The Tigers turned the ball over 14 times, resulting in their worst turnover percentage for a single game since a victory over NC State almost three entire months ago.

Keyshawn Hall had six of those, and the vast majority of his 26 points came in a second half in which Auburn was down by double-digits for all but a minute. Tahaad Pettiford went 1-9 from the field in by far his worst performance of what had been a bounceback month for him. KeShawn Murphy, the hero of the Kentucky win, was a non-factor with just four points and three rebounds in a foul-affected 14 minutes.

If it wasn’t for Kevin Overton, who scored double-digits in both halves for an efficient 26-point, never-subbed-out-a-single-time outing, Auburn would have gotten ran out of a mostly empty arena by a struggling opponent much earlier.

And that’s part of what makes the no-show on defense even more unacceptable.

“We had a lot of breakdowns offensively,” Pearl said. “We didn’t execute our stuff. But, defensively, it’s baffling some of the mistakes that we’re making right now. And it’s just stuff that we constantly talk about. Teams are shooting over 40% from 3 on us.

“In order for us to be able to win some games down the stretch, we have to cut that out. And I gotta figure out, as their coach, how to do that.”

If not, Auburn’s late-season slide could soon turn into the most maddening thing of all: No NCAA Tournament bid for the first time in five years and only the second time in the last seven editions of the Big Dance.

“Saturday is a must-win,” Pearl said. “If you don't win that game, you're out of the NCAA Tournament. That's what our mindset has to be leading up to that game. We have to play desperate. We have to play hungry. We have to do everything the opposite of what we did tonight.

“We were entitled tonight.”

Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 91-79 loss at Oklahoma, including the Rotation Charts and the Quote of the Night.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

The good defensive performances are now the outliers

Going back to that defensive efficiency number in SEC play, it’s pretty simple: Auburn has only one once with a subpar defensive performance. That came in a home game against Texas, when an Auburn team that shoots 33.6% from deep this season went 11-21 (52.4%) and won a shootout.

That was an outlier performance from Auburn. The problem is that the defense wasn’t, and the deeper we get into the season, the more the good defensive performances feel out of the ordinary.