Observations: Auburn 106, Ole Miss 76
In their second-to-last home date, the Tigers made a victory over a Big Dance-bound SEC team feel like an early-season paycheck game.
(David Gray/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — Bruce Pearl couldn’t help himself Wednesday night.
When Pearl was asked about how his Auburn team was able to hang nearly 200 points across two games against a top-20 defense in Ole Miss, he went back to a line he used all the way back after the Tigers’ first victory in a program record-breaking 14-1 start to SEC play.
“Size matters,” Pearl said. “We’re bigger. It matters in basketball, and it matters in jewelry. Size matters.”
That’s fitting, because Auburn’s size got it one step closer to some valuable jewelry.
On Wednesday night, Auburn torched Ole Miss by 30 points. It was its biggest margin of victory in conference play, and it was its biggest margin of victory since it crushed Georgia State by 43 nearly two months ago.
But Georgia State is currently 13-17 and in the bottom half of the Sun Belt as KenPom’s No. 272 team. Ole Miss is 19-9, firmly in the NCAA Tournament field and is KenPom’s No. 25 team.
The Tigers still made the Rebels look more like those paycheck non-conference opponents. Auburn went on a 12-0 run early, followed closely by a 10-0 run. After a 7-2 run minutes later, the Tigers were already up by 22 points.
Although Ole Miss found a groove on offense and cut that lead all the way down to six, Auburn extended it back to double-digits by halftime. That advantage grew to 16 points by the under-16 timeout of the second half. It was back up to 20 by the midway point of the half.
And, then, the Tigers went on a 15-4 run — followed by another 8-0 run in the final minutes — to score the most points they’ve had in regulation in more than four years. They finished with an offensive efficiency mark on KenPom of 148.9, which was the best the program has had since at least 1997.
“We played so well offensively,” Pearl said. “Shot it so well, shared it so well. I just think that there’s just some really special pieces.”
One of those really special pieces is Johni Broome, who added onto his National Player of the Year candidacy with 24 points, nine rebounds and four assists.
Broome was the single biggest difference-maker Wednesday night, tormenting a much smaller Ole Miss team with his scoring, rebounding and playmaking.
“We got the best center in the country,” power forward Chaney Johnson said. “That's all I gotta say: We got the best center in the country. When you pass it to him, it's an automatic assist.
“Pass it to him, run back down the court and get ready to play defense.”
Auburn played some stretches of great defense, too. Ole Miss had a 1-10 stretch from the field in the first half that turned a close contest into a complete blowout. After consistently scoring during the middle of the game, the Rebels went nearly seven entire minutes in the second half with just one made field goal.
Even after losing most of a huge lead early, Auburn slammed the front door on Ole Miss and then dropped it into a trap door.
For those who were wondering if the Tigers were playing with their food too much or not putting together enough impressive wins like others at the top of the metrics, they showed once again that their best is better than pretty much everyone else’s.
And, now, it’s just one more positive result away from clinching at least a share of the toughest regular-season title in modern college basketball history — and just two more positive results away from taking that SEC championship outright.
“I'd say I'm proud of this team and this staff for all the work we've put in,” Broome said. “It's finally showing a little bit. Job's not finished.”
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 106-76 rout of Ole Miss, along with Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night.
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
The Rebels really had no answer for the Tigers’ size
Go back to the tale of the tape heading into this game: Ole Miss was the No. 329 team in the country in terms of average height, and Auburn used that to its full advantage in the first matchup in Oxford.
Same song, second verse.