Observations: Auburn 106, Queens 65
A better-than-expected crowd witnessed a better-than-expected Auburn victory — just in time for the start of SEC play this weekend.
AUBURN — If there was ever a time in the Pearl Era for Auburn basketball to play in front of a thin home crowd, Monday night would have been it.
Students have been gone for weeks. The Tigers had gotten blown out in two of their last three games and were unranked for the first time in a while. The opponent was a newer Division I team. The date was in no man’s land between Christmas and New Year’s. And game time, for some wild TV reasons, wasn’t until after 9 p.m. locally.
But when Steven Pearl and his starters met just before tipoff of Auburn’s non-conference finale against Queens, they looked up to see an almost completely full Neville Arena — from the first-come, first-serve student section to the very top.
“I told them to look around,” Pearl said. “And they’re like, ‘Hell yeah. This is unbelievable.’ Nowhere in the country, in my opinion, is going to have this type of turnout this late. So, just so thankful for our fans to show up like that in support of these guys.
“Ultimately, it led to a really impressive first half for us, and I thought that it really inspired our guys to go out there and lay everything on the line. I told our guys our fans deserve your best performance tonight.”
The next time Pearl and his team met near their bench, Auburn was already up by 13. The next time after that, the lead had already doubled to 26. Queens didn’t even get to double-digit points until the third media timeout, which was 12:21 into the game.
This was total domination from a still-growing team that needed to showcase just that — and for a loyal fan base that wanted to see just that — after a stretch of struggles.
“It just looked like Auburn basketball again,” Pearl said.
The Tigers went to the locker room up by 36 and couldn’t replicate such a dismantling after halftime. Still, Auburn won the second half after a strong finish from its bench, putting the finishing touches on a 106-65 victory over Queens that will carry it right into the start of SEC play on Saturday against high-scoring rival Georgia.
Auburn saved its best paycheck game for last this season, dominating on defense against a top-75 KenPom offense early and shredding an opponent with its own sharpshooting and slick ball movement for the majority of the game.
Four Auburn players scored in double figures, including a career-best 27 points from Elyjah Freeman and another 20-point showing from Kevin Overton. Star point guard Tahaad Pettiford couldn’t get his shot to fall again, but he more than made up for it was a career-best nine assists.
The Tigers hit 15 threes, the most since that season-opening beatdown of Vermont last year, and had 22 assists on 35 made shots. Meanwhile, Queens only went 2-15 from beyond the arc, despite being one of the nation’s best 3-point shooting teams.
It was just what Auburn wanted to get after coming back from a holiday break and needing to bounce back from some rough performances away from home. The Tigers gave a lot of credit to how they practiced — and rallied together — after Christmas.
The win won’t guarantee anything moving forward, as Auburn will likely be a rare underdog at Georgia in a few days. But the Tigers will at least go there with the confidence from a win in which they did exactly what they said they wanted to do.
“We've just kept being vocal about it,” center KeShawn Murphy said. “But tonight was the night where we were like, 'Let's do it.' Us preaching it and coming out and actually doing it was a step in the right direction, leading us right into conference play.”
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 41-point rout of Queens, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and Quote of the Night.
That was impressive defense against a dangerous offense
While Queens has been used to taking some paycheck beatings from high-major teams this season, several things were quite different in this particular loss to Auburn.