Observations: Auburn 87, Purdue 69
For the second straight Saturday, Auburn crushed a top-30 opponent to further cement itself as the best-looking team in America.
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(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
BIRMINGHAM — On the first day of winter, it felt like summer for Auburn basketball.
The vibes were reminiscent of open gym in the offseason. The Tigers were letting everybody eat on offense and taking great pride in their work on defense. The pure love of the game was radiating off their faces.
“You see how much fun we play with out here,” center Johni Broome said. “But it starts in June, where everybody gets to campus and everybody's having fun, playing pickup. Everybody's talking. It just builds the foundation and system of this group.
“Nobody wants theirs. Everybody's bought in to winning basketball. As you can see, we have a lot of fun while we play.”
But Saturday wasn’t just having fun in an empty practice gym. It was a nationally televised Quad 1 game, against defending national runner-up Purdue, in front of nearly 18,000 screaming fans in Birmingham.
It was as big of a stage as you can get in December. Yet, inside the 94-by-50-foot court, it looked like Auburn basketball was just having fun by themselves.
And that’s a testament to how truly dominant these Tigers can be. They were up on the Boilermakers by 20 points or more for most of the second half, even crossing into the 30-point threshold several times. An 11-0 Purdue run against Auburn’s reserves was the only thing keeping the game from looking like the true beatdown that it was.
That’s not supposed to happen. But it’s become a regular occurrence for Auburn, which has now won four Quad 1 games by 13 or more points. Its other two Quad 1 wins came against two of the five best teams in the country. (That’s six, and no one else has more than three.) Its only loss came on the road against arguably the most talented team in the country.
“I was concerned about the toughness of our schedule,” Bruce Pearl said after Auburn’s 87-69 win over Purdue. “If we couldn't handle it, we could've hurt our league by being overwhelmed by just the number of Quad 1 opportunities and teams we were playing.
“But we didn't. We actually helped our league, and that matters to me a great deal.”
Saturday might have felt like business as usual for this Auburn basketball team. However, it shouldn’t be taken for granted in the slightest.
From the start of the Associated Press poll in men’s college basketball in 1948 to the end of last year, Auburn had beaten a total of four ranked non-conference teams in the regular season.
Since November 9 of this year — six weeks ago — Auburn has matched that number.
“We let one slip versus Duke, but credit those guys,” Broome said. “They're a good team, but every non-conference team has been really good. It just feels good to have a coach that makes a schedule like that, because he shows the belief in us.”
Speaking of belief: In case there were still any non-believers this holiday season, here’s your chance to get onboard. This Auburn basketball team has the potential to hang banners. Plural.
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 87-69 win over Purdue in Birmingham, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night.
C Dylan Cardwell (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
Auburn’s defense is getting scarier
It’s easy to get caught up in Auburn’s offensive numbers, because it’s got the best attack in the entire country. That side of the floor wasn’t as surprising Saturday, considering Purdue was just barely inside the top 70 on KenPom for adjusted defensive efficiency.
But Purdue did have a top-10 offense, led by one of the nation’s best interior scorers in Trey Kaufman-Renn, perhaps the best point guard in America in Braden Smith and an army of shooters. It was arguably its second-toughest offensive matchup to date, trailing only Iowa State.