IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Pearl’s pushing Auburn forward in his first season

Ken Cross

February 16, 2015 at 3:03 pm.

 

Bruce Pearl is making progress at Auburn. (John Reed USA TODAY Sports)

Bruce Pearl is genuine.  His sense of humor and enthusiasm for college basketball, and life in general, is reminiscent of Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll. 

Saturday, he brought his upstart Auburn Tigers into Athens and they left with a 69-68 win over a Georgia team that is bearing down on an NCAA bid.  There have been good moments and bad moments. The win over Xavier earlier in the season was a bright spot. So was the win over LSU on the road recently. But the Tigers have hit the skids recently by dropping seven of their last 10 games.

But progress is being made on the Plains.

Auburn’s players accept game plans and push the negatives of previous games out of their minds and go forward.  A picture of their mental toughness is evident by how they’ve played on the road.

“It appears we are playing better on the road,” Pearl said after Saturday’s win. “Alabama; Tennessee; LSU; and now here (Georgia). We were able to control tempo. Defensively, we had a great game plan. Georgia, what they run is so hard to guard. You have to have a system for guarding it. If you let them do what they want to do, they will kill you.”

Auburn led most of the game then fell behind by seven with just over eight minutes to go.  The Tigers snapped back and scored on their last 10 possessions to pull out the victory.  It revealed the character of the Auburn team and its coach, who always seems to have the undermanned Tigers ready to play each night and in position to win.

“I think they stayed committed to the game – guarding and executing the play calls,” Pearl analyzed. “Georgia is tremendously solid and is built to beat a more traditional team. They don’t have tremendous quickness or depth so when they play somebody a little smaller, it gave us an opportunity.  There are teams they can beat that we can’t come close to beating.  It wasn’t an easy matchup for them.  We spread out shot the ball and executed our stuff.”

The Tigers still skirt adversity, even with a 12-13 record.  The worst set of circumstances for any player came to fruition last week when Antoine Mason’s father, Anthony, had a massive heart attack on Wednesday.  The younger Mason traveled to Atlanta from New York and then to Athens — and played 25 minutes with virtually no sleep in scoring nine points in Saturday’s win.

“Antoine made the decision yesterday, late afternoon, early evening, that he was going to come back,” explained Pearl, “First of all we talked about just when he was going to come back. The thing that we talked about long and hard was his dad is in the hospital battling long and hard and he has a tough comeback. The decision was for Antoine to make the decision to stay with his mom and be with his dad, but he decided to come back and coming back here now is a no-brainer.”

Mason’s decision could be more or less cathartic as well with reports stating that Anthony, the former NBA star, is in stable condition. Pearl talked about how pleased he is that the climate and culture of the Auburn experience is a major positive for Mason, who is graduated from Niagara last season.

“He came here for one year to try to be part of this Auburn family and you know it kind of gets into your blood and stays there forever,” said Pearl, “His coming back – that’s part of our Auburn basketball history this year. He made a very strong statement here that he wants to be with his brothers.”

ARKANSAS:  We should be looking at five or six NCAA participants out of the SEC.  Perhaps this side of Kentucky, no team is scarier than the Razorbacks.  They fit the Mike Anderson personality perfectly and have won 20 of their first 25 games for the first time since the 1997-98 season.

Bobby Portis and Michael Qualls provide the steady one-two punch that sees 11 Razorbacks averaging double figures in minutes.  Portis shoots 56.4 percent from the floor, while Qualls gets to the rim as well as being a consistent three-point shooter in averaging 15.3 points per outing.

Saturday night at Ole Miss role player Manuale Watkins scored with 6.4 seconds remaining to give the Hogs a 71-70 win and sole possession of second place in the SEC.  Ironically, the Rebels defeated Florida Thursday night in similar fashion on late game heroics from guard Stefan Moody.

“It was a high-level game,” said Rebels coach Andy Kennedy afterward, “It was very physical.  When you get to February basketball, it’s played like this.  That’s the way it should be played. We made the shot Thursday night in a highly contested game.  We missed the shot tonight, and Arkansas made the play.  We didn’t lose the game.  Arkansas won it, they earned the win.”

OLE MISS: Kennedy has developed a similar depth to Arkansas and the chemistry is as good as it has been with Marshall Henderson off the squad and on to the pro league in Qatar.  The backcourt of Moody, Jarvis Summers, and Martavious Newby is a tough matchup.

Summers leads the SEC in a assists at 5.5 per game while leads Ole Miss in scoring at 15.6 points per game.  However, the physicality and defense dictated by the Rebs has pushed them into position to get back into the NCAA Tournament.  The loss to Arkansas stopped a six-game winning streak which featured Ole Miss averaging only 8.8 points per game during that clip.  

“Two teams were fighting for their lives,” said Kennedy of the matchup with the Razorbacks, “We made the shot Thursday night and tonight they did.  We dominated them on the glass, had eight turnovers at halftime and we shot 38 percent in our own building and they shot 48. We stayed in the game with 21 huge offensive rebounds and stayed in the game despite the numbers I just read to you.”

LSU: The Tigers belong in a field of 68 as they were primed to knock off Kentucky before losing 71-69 at home last Tuesday. The Tigers were very impressive in a bounce back performance, winning at Tennessee 73-55.  Jarell Martin and Jordan Mickey continue to be possibly the top overall big-man combination in the nation.

Against the length and athleticism of the Kentucky front line, Martin had 21 points and 11 boards while Mickey netted 16 and seven off the glass.  Martin was in foul trouble against the smaller Vols, but Mickey had his ninth 20-point outing of the season with 20 points and 11 rebounds. 

“I thought both did a dynamic job against great post guys that Kentucky is able to play by starting and bringing off the bench,” said LSU coach Johnny Jones, “It showed the ability that both of those guys have and the impact that they make in this league.”

Tuesday night in College Station, Texas, the Tigers battle a Texas A&M squad that rebounded with a win over Florida after a loss last Thursday at home against Georgia.  These two teams should be NCAA locks as well.  LSU has an RPI of 53 and A&M is at 48.

“There’s not so much desperation, but the focus has to be at a certain point,” said Jones on how much of a sense of urgency is needed with three weeks left and the SEC Tournament, “The window is closing, though, to where we are going to have to minimize mistakes we are making and the setbacks that you have.”

Aggies coach Billy Kennedy sees the enormity now of the LSU game, especially in Baton Rouge, after splitting the Thursday-Saturday twin-bill at home.

“I think our guys put a lot of pressure on themselves,” said Kennedy, “I keep telling our guys to stop worrying and just play.  Now we have one game on the road, which happens to be against LSU who’s the second best team on paper in our league.”

 

 

 

 

 

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