The Auburn Arena was sold-out and the stage was set for Auburn to win its first conference game of the season, but the team came up short, losing to rival Alabama 58-68.
The Tigers shot 38 percent from the field and had 36 rebounds in Saturday's loss.
"We can't score," said head coach Tony Barbee. "I thought we played hard. I thought we played tough. We out rebounded a really good rebounding team, but we can't score. We played well enough defensively to win the game, but we need to score."
Junior forward Kenny Gabriel opened the scoring with a jumper after an assist from sophomore center Ron Chubb.
Gabriel finished the game shooting 5-14 from the field while going 1-3 from behind the arch.
The teams exchanged points, but neither team saw a lead bigger than five through the first half.
As time wound down in the half Auburn found itself up by one with less than a minute to go, but saw its lead squandered after Alabama sophomore forward Tony Mitchell hit a 3-pointer giving the Tide a 29-27 halftime lead.
"With all the defensive stops that we get, we have to convert that on the defensive end by scoring the ball," Ross said. "Tonight, we didn't have enough guys scoring the ball. That made it tough to keep up with them because every time they scored, it made it tougher on our offense and put more pressure on our offense to score the ball, and we weren't converting."
With both teams once again exchanging points through the second half, the Crimson Tide was able to keep the Tiger offense at bay for more than four minutes toward the end of the game. The Tide used this time to go on an 8-0 run.
"Their defense was pretty good," Ross said. "They pressed us earlier in the game which caused a lot of turnovers, put pressure on our point guards and our two-guards and made us turn the ball over a lot."
This marks the first time since 2006 Auburn started 0-5 in conference play and Alabama won in Auburn.
"It was very disappointing because with a crowd like that, that helped us a lot through the whole game," Gabriel said. "To see all of their support, we didn't just want to let them down. Knowing that we let them down, all I can say is we appreciate you all coming out, and hopefully you all will come back, and we'll have a crowd like that the next home game. We're going to keep fighting, and we just have to keep executing our offense so we can pull out these victories."
Auburn returns to action Tuesday as they travel to Fayetteville to face the Arkansas Razorbacks at 8 p.m. on ESPNU.
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