INDIANAPOLIS – How to explain the disaster that is Auburn’s men’s basketball schedule? What about all the nasty bruises on the Tigers resume? Maybe this will explain it:
Arizona, Houston, Michigan and Purdue have at least two things in common.
All of them were ranked No. 1 in the AP or coaches polls this season.
And as of Saturday, Auburn has played them all.
Their last loss, too, was an 88-60 drubbing by Purdue on Saturday in downtown Indianapolis. Another day, a current or former resident of the penthouse hit another body. 102-72 vs. Michigan and 97-68 vs. Arizona. But only 73-72 against Houston with a chance to win in the last minute.
In five weeks, the four top-ranked lumberjacks entered Saturday with a combined record of 43-2 to close the business. Whose bright idea was this?
Stephen Pearl said, “It wasn’t me, so you can call BP,” and suddenly retired coach Bruce Pearl (and dad) replaced him (and his son) and left the non-conference schedule for a walk through death valley.
It wasn’t just any #1 Fab Four. There was also Big East preseason favorite St. John’s, Southern Conference favorite Chattanooga, and league powerhouses NC State and Oregon. Auburn has won all four of those by double digits. Of the eight games listed above, only one was on the Tigers’ home field. If any team should have taken liberties for their flaws, it would have been them. There’s a soft 8-4 record, a mediocre 8-4 record, and then there’s Auburn’s 8-4 record.
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Saturday was ugly, okay. Gainbridge Fieldhouse, home of the Pacers and Fever, isn’t Purdue’s home arena, but it might as well be 75 minutes from campus and 30 miles from Purdue All-American Braden Smith’s high school. In addition, the Boilermakers and their friendly crowd are burning to avenge the numbers Auburn put up last season, leading by 33 points and winning by 18. On Saturday, Purdue shot 56% from the field, missed none of its 10 free throws, and routed the Tigers 40-20 in the paint. Turnaround time. “I really wanted this team to win,” Boilermaker Trey Kaufman-Renn said. “I wish we could have won by 50 points instead of what we did.”
Auburn went to the Final Four last April with a confident team. “They just hung with them,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “They knew they were going to kick your ass.” Another year, another actors, another Pearl. But instead of talking about Saturday’s whiplash, consider Auburn’s arm and legs as a whole, and what this team has been through over the past five weeks.
Stephen Pearl, you have the floor.
“You look at a 12-game schedule with 10 rookies and the only returning sophomore quarterback was too much. It was probably one or two games too many,” he said Saturday. “You look across the country, there aren’t 10 teams that have done better than us so far in the schedule we’ve played. Not really. I think maybe five.”
“Would I prefer 9-3? Sure. 10-2? Sure. But with the schedule we’ve played, 8-4 is pretty good. Here’s the exciting part. We’ll watch that film, I think we’ll learn a lot from it. We’ll watch it and think … why we missed so many open shots tonight.”
Auburn shot just 36% from the field. For the Tigers, Kevin Overton scored 22 points, Keyshawn Hall scored 14 points, and the others scored a total of 24 points. Braden Smith had 14 assists, one more than Auburn’s team. It was close enough to change six shots, but the lead was cut as the Tigers continued to shoot. Tough games against brutal opponents help build the team. But still.
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“We have to be more competitive in these games,” Pearl said. “We can’t get hit like that. The only exception tonight where I thought we competed as high as I thought we did was against Michigan and Arizona, and we just kicked ass.”
It seems that there are no good missions ahead. Then 5-7 Queens on Dec. 29 sounds like a nice change, but notice that the Royals are picked to win the ASUN this season. Then came the SEC opener at Georgia State, with a new AP ranking, a 10-1 record and the nation’s highest scoring average. Then the rest of the league’s schedule was fraught with danger. By March, Auburn would have played 31 regular-season games, but only played eight games against non-NCAA tournament opponents last spring.
Forgive me if the Tigers look a little tired when they huddle together for their postgame rounds on the field Saturday night. Tahad Pettiford was in the boot with an ankle injury, which Auburn appears to need to make things tougher. “I think we’re learning how to go into these games,” Overton said.
It’s all part of the new roster and development of the Pearls. He spent most of his adult life on his father’s staff until the top job suddenly became his in September.
“Being behind WR, he does a lot of things that a lot of head coaches don’t do, and that kind of fell on my plate,” he said of his father’s knack for spending time with the crowd. “As an assistant, you can watch film all day and recruit. That’s what you do. There’s a hundred other things you have to do as a head coach.”
“But right now, my focus is on these guys. We’ve put them through a lot, and I think they’ve rung their bells so far. I’m proud of my team. People may not want to hear me say that right now, but I am. I’m going to watch this movie, and I’m going to be more motivated than most people are going to be back home.”
Will Auburn return to the Final Four? Maybe not. But there’s a good chance the Tigers have already lost to one team, maybe more than one.
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