After beating UK, Auburn basketball has to stay 'desperate' at OU

Saturday's thriller kept the Tigers on the right side of the bubble, but there's work to do. And Auburn knows what it will take to win again.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — After Elyjah Freeman got his tip-in behind Ke’Shawn Murphy to fall — and after Auburn defended the attempt at a miracle winner by Kentucky without incident — you could hear the sighs of relief echoing throughout Neville Arena.

Auburn had snatched a 1-point victory over Kentucky that it very much needed to still feel good about its chances at making the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers likely could not afford a sixth straight loss, especially one in their most valuable home game for the rest of the season.

But there are still a few weeks until Selection Sunday. Nothing is guaranteed for Auburn. There are still landmines between now and the postseason.

It’s “survive and advance,” not “survive once and that’s it.”

After such a physical and emotional win, Auburn has one of the quickest possible turnarounds in the SEC schedule: A primetime Saturday home game, followed by a Tuesday night road trip several states away.

“You’re trying to recover, but you’re also trying to get the scout in,” freshman forward Sebastian Williams-Adams said Monday, just a few hours before Auburn left the Plains yet again. “Your Tuesday opponent is just as important as your Saturday night opponent was.”

Williams-Adams is correct. While Oklahoma has lost 11 out of its last 13 games, it’s still a Quad 1 opportunity for Auburn’s NCAA Tournament resume. According to T-Rank, Auburn picked up +0.40 Wins Above Bubble by beating Kentucky at home Saturday. A road win at Oklahoma is worth an estimated +0.55.

That’s quite the prize for a team that is currently sitting at a 72% chance of making the Big Dance. A loss would knock Auburn down into surefire bubble territory, with its next two games the “only can hurt you” type of non-Quad 1 matchups.

And these Sooners represent real danger away from home. Oklahoma’s two wins in this 13-game slide? A stunning road victory at Vanderbilt, followed by a 16-point home win against Georgia, just two weeks ago.

This is one of the most experienced teams in college basketball, and it joins Houston as the only two high-major squads to have started the same starting five in every single game. The Sooners are well-drilled in what they do under Porter Moser.

“When you look at a lot of their games this year, they had a double-digit lead on Texas in the first half, they had a double-digit lead on Arkansas in the first half,” head coach Steven Pearl said Monday. “They were beating Vanderbilt by 20. They had 1.5 points per possession against Georgia. This is an incredibly dangerous team. They’ve had double-digit leads against a lot of teams in our league and even have had leads late in games. … It’s a team that plays well at home, and an incredibly dangerous opponent.

“They have our full attention, for sure.”

The win over Kentucky on Saturday night represented a marked improvement for Auburn, especially on the defensive end of the floor. Auburn hadn’t played that well on defense since a monumental road upset of first-place Florida almost an entire month earlier.

There were mistakes, of course. Auburn’s defense has been solid-at-best this season, and crucial breakdowns in the final minutes of the game let Kentucky erase what had been a multi-possession lead. It followed a lot of the same script of the Mississippi State loss earlier in the week.

But there was a level of hunger that you could actually see from a team of Tigers that had been backed into a corner. Auburn had to go above and beyond in that game to survive.

Now, that has to be the identity the rest of the way.

“I think we know we’re at our best when we’re playing desperate,” Williams-Adams said. “And, to be honest, the SEC is not somewhere you can just show up every day and just expect to win the game — even if you are favored. That has been our mindset. We’ve established that, for the rest of the season, we’re playing desperate.

“We’re playing for our Tournament hopes.”