The Auburn Tigers are the hottest team in the SEC and maybe the entire country. They picked up their 11th straight win Saturday night over Ole Miss 82-59 in Neville Arena and are now in sole lead of the SEC with a perfect 5-0 record.
The Tigers took control of the game in the first half and enjoyed a 19-point lead at the break. Unlike past games, they did not take their foot off the gas and only built on the lead after the break, winning by 23 points.
Auburn’s depth was once again key as all 11 rotation players scored and each played 10 or more minutes. The bench, led by Dylan Cardwell and Lior Berman, had a particularly great night, scoring 40 points and playing great defense.
The win finally impressed Bruce Pearl, who along with Cardwell, and Berman spoke with the media after the game. Here is a look at everything they had to say.
Pearl’s opening statement…
“Well, two weeks from now we have to go back to Oxford, so I’m already starting to get prepared, so I’m not going to get too happy. I told our guys before, every now and then, they’re asking me, ‘coach, are you impressed yet?’ Well, I really haven’t been. Part of it is just we haven’t played that many ranked teams yet, right. But, you know, Ole Miss comes in ranked and they’re a good team. They are really well-coached and have a really good personnel of older guys. And gah lee, when you look at Jaemyn Brakefield, Matthew Murrell or Allen Flanigan, and the kid (Jaylen) Murray. Those guys have played a lot of basketball, all of those, each one of them are 20 points a night guys. To play that well and control the game like we did was impressive. I thought particularly the way we guarded, and again we did a good job, especially in the first half, guarding without fouling. I thought it was a great example of what I want this team to try to be like. A couple of things, momentum helps with the substitution. Lior Berman got a rotation in there and was playing really well. Particularly on the defensive end, he was physical. He had gone up against Al (Flanigan) for four years and really did a nice job. He was working really hard defensively. He was effective out there. It was more than his time to come out and Chad Baker-Mazara was due to come in. Chad Baker-Mazara says I should leave him in there, because Lior was playing so great. When you hae teammates like that, that’s really special. So, let’s hope we can keep that going. We turned it over a…
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