Observations: Auburn 71, South Carolina 67
On a night when the jumpers just wouldn't go down, Auburn powered its way to an ugly win it just had to get — by any means necessary.
AUBURN — The ugliest win is better than the prettiest loss.
That’s especially true when you’re a college basketball team that will likely be fighting for an NCAA Tournament spot. You want style points, but you just need results.
Auburn got one of those results Saturday evening, beating South Carolina by a score of 71-67. This was a Quad 3 game by the Selection Committee’s NET ratings. Losing one of those would be a massive blow to a tournament resume, even in January.
The last time Auburn lost a Quad 3 game was three years ago, when Georgia beat it by 12 in Athens. That team had to scratch and claw for a 9 seed. The last time Auburn lost a Quad 3 home game was five years ago, when it didn’t go dancing at all.
Auburn avoided that this time around, maintaining a solid but not too-comfortable lead for all but four-ish minutes and finishing it out late with clutch free throws. The victory wasn’t good for the offensive metrics — the Tigers fell from a top-10 offense on KenPom to No. 15 — but those don’t matter nearly as much as the win-loss record.
And, as Steven Pearl noted afterwards, showing you can win ugly might matter later.
“That’s important, because it’s not going to be pretty every night,” Pearl said. “Because teams are going to do things to take away some of your strengths offensively, and you might just be having a bad shooting night. … But for this team, to be able to grind out a win like that, when it’s an ugly game, that’s important.
“Because not every single one is going to be like Georgia, Texas A&M and Arkansas that’s going to be all high-scoring. For us to have the confidence to see, ‘Alright, we can win some of these grind-’em-out games,’ because that’s what’s gonna happen on the road… for us to be able to pull one through, playing like that, it’s important.”
Besides, Auburn didn’t need pretty to beat South Carolina.
It needed power. It needed grit. It needed toughness.
It needed Filip Jović.
When Auburn went on a 6-0 run — the largest one of this offensively challenged game — to take a double-digit lead on South Carolina with less than five minutes to play, it was capped by Jović jumping a pass to the top of the key and racing down the floor for an emphatic two-handed dunk over a hopeless defender.
The coast-to-coast sequence gave Jović 23 points on the night — more than twice as many as any of his teammates. In a game where jumpers clanged off the rim constantly for Auburn, Jović showed the Tigers how to win anyway: Get stops on defense and then pound the paint. (Auburn had 42 points down there.)
“I just play aggressively,” Jović said. “Defense was what Coach needed from us. And, yeah, the game was just coming to me.”
With Jović leading the way, Auburn overcame a night in which it hit its first and last 3-point attempt and missed the 17 between them.
Auburn overcame a night in which its leading scorer, Keyshawn Hall, picked up three fouls in the first 8:42 and was limited to season lows of eight points and 14 minutes.
Auburn overcame a night in which it lost the rebounding battle and didn’t take much advantage of 15 Carolina turnovers.
Hey, it wasn’t pretty. But it got the job done in an increasingly survive-and-advance type of season for Auburn — and SEC basketball as a whole.
“It can do a lot for our confidence,” said Sebastian Williams-Adams, Jović’s fellow freshman forward and new best friend. “I don't think I've ever seen a night where KO (Kevin Overton) and Tahaad (Pettiford) shot like that, E-Free (Elyjah Freeman) having zero points, Key Hall missing threes — I don't think I've even seen a practice where we've shot this bad.
“So, for us to go out there and not let our offense affect our defense and go out there and win this grind-it-out game, it proves that if we go on the road, our shots might not travel, but our defense will. To keep this mindset of not letting the offense affect our defense, it can just do wonders.”
Here are three big Observations from Auburn’s 71-67 win over South Carolina, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and Quotes of the Night.
This time, Auburn didn’t let its offense affect its defense
Let’s go back to something Williams-Adams said in that last quote: Not letting your offense affect your defense.
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