Observations: Auburn 98, Richmond 54
After a tough loss at Duke, the Tigers did more than just care of business in a game that was easy (on) Sunday morning.
SG/SF Miles Kelly (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — As Bruce Pearl said, this could have been a trap game.
Auburn was just a few days removed from its first loss of the season — an emotional and physical contest at Duke’s famed Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The opponent, Richmond, had a deep recent history of playing power-conference teams quite closely. The time slot, a Sunday morning game, was also quite different.
Even if it would have taken a dreadful Auburn performance to lose to Richmond, it could have easily been a sleepy, lackluster game for a heavy favorite that had played a lot of important basketball in the last couple of weeks.
Instead, Auburn scored nine of the first 12 points Sunday. Then came a 12-3 surge that ensured Richmond wouldn’t come within single digits the rest of the way. Auburn was up by 20 late in the first half. It was up by 30 early in the second half. It was up by 40 before the “fourth quarter,” and it went on a 10-0 run to win by 44.
“I'm just very impressed with my guys for being excited about playing,” Pearl said. “I think, watching Dayton play in Maui — Dayton, obviously, is in the Atlantic 10, and knowing that this (Richmond) team won the Atlantic 10 a year ago… They lost some guys, but still, our guys respected them.
“They honored the game and played hard.”
There’s taking care of business, and then there’s what Auburn did Sunday in its first home game in nearly three whole weeks.
Auburn was favored by a little less than 30 and covered that with ease. Six different players scored in double figures. Two more scored seven, and the Tigers got points from three others. Eight guys had at least four rebounds, too.
Richmond will likely end up as one of the three worst teams Auburn will play all season. But there’s something to be said for going above and beyond the expectation in a brief pause before getting right back to playing high-quality competition this upcoming Saturday.
And it didn’t take long for Auburn to turn its attention away from struggling Richmond and toward a top-30 Ohio State, which it will face in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena.
“As BP just said in the locker room, we've gotta get back to work,” said Miles Kelly, who tied for the team lead in scoring with Tahaad Pettiford. “We're gonna ramp it up in the weight room a little bit, because this is really our first kind of break — not really a break, but the longest space we've had between the games.
“So we're gonna ramp it up with the training and get our bodies right, so we can be fresh for Ohio State.”
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 98-54 win over Richmond, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Day.
C Dylan Cardwell (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
A bounce-back defensive performance “set the tone”
In the two days of practice before the Richmond game, Pearl hammered home the importance of fixing things on defense.