Following a 90-71 victory against Alabama, Auburn needs just one win or one Tennessee loss in the final three games to clinch their third conference title in school history. The Tigers are now 24-4 overall and 12-3 in the SEC.
Wednesday night’s game was the Tiger’s first full game without starter and leading shot-blocker Anfernee McLemore, but once again, Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl’s squad embraced their next-man-up mentality and found a way to win.
“When you look at more Horace, more Desean, more Chuma, that’s not a bad thing,” Pearl said. “Less Anfernee is a bad thing and that’s how we approach it. I thought all three of those guys took advantage of the minutes they got…Who did not step up of the seven guys that played?”
What makes the Alabama victory even more impressive is the fact that the Tigers were without their second-leading scorer, Mustapha Heron, who has been averaging 16.1 points and 5.4 rebounds per game.
Heron was held out due to a stomach virus, but Pearl said in his press conference Thursday that he is making positive strides for Saturday’s matchup at Florida.
“I talked to the trainer, little better today. Able to keep food down and felt better this morning for the first time this week,” Pearl said. “He will come by practice today and I think he'll be able to watch film and maybe get some shots and see if he can rebuild just his strength and energy…Today he'll definitely sit. He'll watch. He may get some shots.
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"I know Mustapha, he's going to want to be out there working. This is probably three, four days now? He hasn't taken three or four days off in four years probably. We just got to get back to healthy but he was feeling better this morning so we'll see.”
Saturday's showdown in Gainesville is now the most crucial game of the year for the No. 12 Tigers, who haven't won at Florida since the 1995-96 season and were blown out in Auburn last season by 19 points.
“Last season, we gave up 114 points to Florida…so we’ve got to find a different way to guard that system,” Pearl said. “They’ve got six top 50 RPI wins. They’ve got five different players that have scored 23 points or more in a particular game, so they’ve got some real firepower…They turn it over less than 10 times a game, and we rely on turning people over to create some offense.”
Pearl isn’t worried about the postseason quite yet, as the coach knows what a win at Florida would mean for this team, and what it would do for a basketball program that hasn’t been relevant in 20 years.
“Florida and Kentucky are the two programs in our league that have been the most successful recently," Pearl said. "Along the lines of creating relevance for our program and certainly trying to win a championship, there is a big prize on this one.
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