Observations: Auburn 85, St. John's 74
Instead of hitting the panic button down 11 and fresh off a huge loss, Auburn hit St. John's right between the eyes for a knockout in Vegas.
LAS VEGAS — Moments after spiking a water bottle in celebration and then getting doused with a Gatorade bottle, Steven Pearl quieted the Auburn locker room.
“Hey, we’re the sum of our parts,” Pearl said. “OK? Listen, when this team stays together, this team can do unbelievable things.”
There wasn’t a magician on the entire Las Vegas Strip who could have done something as sudden and as unexpected as what Pearl’s team did Tuesday night. Like any good act in this town, the Tigers saved their absolute best for last.
In its third and final game at the Players Era Championship, Auburn bounced back from a 30-point beatdown at the hands of Michigan and rallied from 11 down in the second half to beat Hall of Fame head coach Rick Pitino and a St. John’s team that — despite three losses already — is still a top-16 squad in all the predictive metrics.
The Tigers had watched an early 7-point lead crumble and turn into a sizable Red Storm advantage in less than 10 minutes of action. But, instead of hitting the panic button like so many others had done, Auburn hit St. John’s right between the eyes.
Auburn went on an 11-3 run right after St. John’s took an 11-point lead on the first possession of the second half. Five minutes later, it started a 12-5 run to tie the game. Then Tahaad Pettiford scored twice as many points (12) as St. John’s did as a team (6) in exactly 2:19 to take control. Auburn then closed with a 10-5 finish to win by 11.
Auburn did that while basically only playing six players, including two guards who never left the floor in the second half. And it also did that in its third game in three days, just 24 hours after taking its worst-looking loss in several years.
“First thing we said in the locker room was how are we going to respond, how are we going to bounce back from that?” Pearl said in the postgame press conference, with his head still wet from the Gatorade. “Lesser teams, you kind of see it across the country in these tournaments: When they lose by a wide margin like that, there’s another letdown the next day.
“And I give our guys a lot of credit for not letting that happen.”
The Tigers had, quite literally, never been in this position before as a team. This was Pearl’s eighth official game as a head coach, yet the fourth one against someone who had taken a team to the Final Four. Pettiford was the only returning contributor back from last season. More than half of its rotation is new to Division I basketball, period.
All that newness is naturally going to create some instability and inconsistency. But it hasn’t taken long at all for Auburn to prove that it responds well to adversity — even if it’s responsible for bringing some of that upon itself.
These Tigers truly believe, even when so many watching might not.
“Losing by 30 yesterday definitely was part of it,” Pettiford said. “Losing by 30 gave us a little chip on our shoulder that we needed. Going down 11? That wasn’t anything.”
Auburn used a strong second half Monday to beat Oregon, which got a severe wake-up call against quality competition this week in Las Vegas.
Auburn used a downright elite second half — 1.833 points per possession against a Pitino-coached team that went just 34.5% from the field — Wednesday to beat St. John’s, which might rack up wins with a mostly favorable schedule from here on out.
And Auburn used a just-hang-in-there second half Tuesday to only lose to Michigan by 30. Only getting outscored by 2 after halftime turned out to be the best half of basketball anybody played against the Wolverines this week: Michigan beat both San Diego State and former KenPom No. 1-rated team Gonzaga by 40 to win it all.
That result should put this week’s roller coaster ride into perspective. The Tigers didn’t let a historically powerful buzzsaw keep themselves apart for too long at all.
“I’m proud of just the bounceback,” Pearl said. “Like, it was tough. I’m not going to lie. I’m the worst loser in the world. Man, I was in a rough spot. But I have a lot of confidence in this team, because I’ve seen them battle back through some tough situations already before.
“So I know they’re capable. We just needed to reset and really focus on us. … I thought our guys hung onto that and ultimately came out and executed better. Obviously we talked about it after the game: We still have a long way to go and a lot to improve on. But that was a step in the right direction.”
Here are four Observations from Auburn’s 85-74 win over St. John’s, along with the Rotation Charts, Nerd Stats and the Quote of the Night.
A Tahaad Takeover to truly remember
Leave it to Pettiford, an absolute showman on the basketball court, to look completely in his element in one of the world’s biggest entertainment capitals.