The Auburn Tigers men's basketball team fell to the Alabama Crimson Tide 68-50 Tuesday night at the Auburn Arena in the 144th meeting between the teams.
The Crimson Tide improved to 16-7 overall and 5-4 in SEC play while the Tigers dropped to 13-11 overall and 3-7 in the SEC.
"We just didn't play well," said Auburn coach Tony Barbee. "Give Alabama credit, they came in here and played at a high level of intensity and at the end of the day it came down to toughness, and we got out toughed."
Junior center Rob Chubb started off with eight of the first ten points scored in the game giving Auburn an 8-2 lead only three minutes into the contest. Chubb would finish the night with eight points, shooting only 4 for 6 from the field.
Technical fouls proved to be the story for the Tigers in the first half. Senior forward Kenny Gabriel and sophomore guard Chris Denson were both charged with technical fouls after dunks, while the bench was charged with a technical for reacting to a Chubb foul.
"We got some tough calls that went against us in the first half," said sophomore guard Varez Ward. "A couple of technical fouls and things just went downhill from there."
Alabama finished the last five minutes of the first half on a 14-3 point run to enter halftime leading 35-24.
"There was a momentum change, and we tried our best to take advantage of that and I think we did a great job," said Alabama senior forward JaMychal Green, who led the Crimson Tide in scoring with 19 points.
The Tigers started the second half strong with two free throws from junior guard Frankie Sullivan and a three-point shot by Kenny Gabriel to bring the score difference within six points.
Sullivan ended the night with a team-leading 21 points, bringing him just two points shy from being the 33rd member of the Tigers' 1,000-point club.
The Crimson Tide got into foul trouble early in the second half, but the Tigers ended up shooting only 46.2 percent from the free-throw line.
With more than six minutes remaining Sullivan led the Tigers on a 9-0 run that would bring them within 11 points with 5:31 remaining. This wasn't enough for the Tigers as they only scored one more point to finish the game.
"After that they just got to all of the 50/50 balls, and the game came down to that," Sullivan said. "There were a couple of times we got them to turn the ball over and we were tipping the ball instead of going ahead and grabbing it."
The Tigers finished the game with 20 turnovers and the Crimson Tide capitalized by scoring 26 points off of them.
"They just kept the pressure up and we got a little fatigued, and when we got tired we got sloppy with the ball," Barbee said. "We didn't take care of the ball well enough.
"Things got hard and things got tough, and we went away, and that's not the kind of trait that I want in my ball club."
The Tigers look to bounce back from this as they are set to take on Ole Miss in Oxford on Feb. 11.
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