Ben Simmons poured in 21 points, 13 rebounds and seven assists to lead LSU to an 80-68 win over Auburn Tuesday night in Auburn Arena.
“I thought we did a great job coming in really focused, getting off to a great start, making plays and then finishing the game the way that we needed to against this Auburn basketball team,” said LSU head coach Johnny Jones.
The last time these two programs met, Auburn upset LSU 73-70 in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals after senior guard K.T. Harrell hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key to send the game to overtime in one of the best games of 2015.
Unfortunately for Auburn, there were no late-game heroics this time. Primarily due to the play of Simmons, who’s projected to be the No. 1 pick in this June’s NBA Draft.
“Ben’s always aggressive and he gets after it,” Jones said. “He’s done a great job of taking advantage of chance opportunities for us. When the defense gives him opportunities, especially in the open floor, he’s great at attacking, and tonight he saw those opportunities and I thought he was able to make those plays early.”
Simmons’ versatility was on full display against Auburn, finishing three assists shy of a triple-double. Craig Victor II was LSU’s second leading scorer with 13 points on 6-of-11 shooting.
“You can see why he’s so effective and such a valuable player,” said Auburn head coach Bruch Pearl. “He can score, he can create, he can finish — he makes everyone else better around him. Our game plan was to try to wall him off and get him to take contested shots, but we never really did wall him off. He was able to go by and get to the rim and get too close.”
Bryce Brown paced Auburn in the game’s first 20 minutes, scoring 9 of his 18 points in the first half off of 3-for-5 shooting from deep. Cinmeon Bowers added 15 points and seven rebounds returning from his one-game suspension. Kareem Canty chipped in 14 points and five assists.
Auburn shot 36.5 percent from the floor to LSU’s 56.7 and only made 12 of its 22 free throws. LSU had 46 points in the paint and scored 21 points off of 14 Auburn turnovers.
Bruce Pearl and the Tigers have now dropped four in a row.
“I think in the first half we probably missed six or seven shots two feet from the basket again, and we missed them with our bigs having switched down on their guards," Pearl said. "We should have been able to score at a much higher rate than that. Those are some big factors as to why we weren't successful.”
Auburn men’s basketball will return to action Saturday, Feb. 6, in Athens against the Georgia Bulldogs.
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