Auburn aims to improve its seeding in the SEC and NCAA Tournament this Saturday as the Tigers (23-7, 12-5 SEC) take on Georgia (16-14, 6-11 SEC) in the regular-season finale and the Tigers’ Senior Night.
Head coach Bruce Pearl and his team, which is currently third in the SEC standings, is looking for a win to maintain its top-four spot in the conference and receive a double bye in the SEC Tournament which starts next week.
“We don’t want to play four games in four days,” said center Dylan Cardwell. “We will if we have to, but we’re looking for longevity.”
The Tigers and Bulldogs squared off against one another just two weeks ago when Auburn traveled to Athens, Georgia, to play Georgia head coach Mike White and his team.
The Tigers, who were without starting forward Jaylin Williams, used an explosive second-half offensive performance to down the Bulldogs and pick up a road win. Forward Chad Baker-Mazara, who made his first Auburn start against the Bulldogs and has since started every game, scored a career-high 25 points while also corralling five rebounds and dishing out four assists.
Chaney Johnson also made his first start for the Tigers and scored 16 points to go along with four rebounds, and point guard Aden Holloway caught fire with five 3-pointers, accounting for all 15 of his points, as the Tigers bludgeoned Georgia by 21.
The performances of Baker-Mazara, Johnson and Holloway was a mirror image of how Auburn played as a whole as the Tigers shot 62.1% from the field and 53.8% from three-point range.
On the other side, Georgia scored 76 points, which is just over six points more than the Tigers allow on average in SEC play (69.4), and had three players score 16 points or more.
Georgia gave Auburn trouble by drawing fouls as the Bulldogs shot 31 times from the charity stripe with 25 makes compared to just 16 attempts and 11 makes for the Tigers. Auburn had six players finish the game with three or more fouls and a player foul out in the contest.
While the Tigers couldn’t keep Georgia off the foul line, they did limit the Bulldogs’ shooting. Georgia shot 43.6% from the field, right at its season average, and Auburn’s perimeter defense proved lethal, holding Georgia to just three makes on 14 attempts from beyond the arc.
If Auburn can replicate its defense while also limiting the Bulldogs’ trips to the free-throw line, the Tigers could be looking at another win over their rivals and a successful end to the regular season before the most important part of the season begins.
“In Athens, we had one of our better days from the standpoint of having lost Jaylin Williams, had to make a lot of changes,” Pearl said. “I thought those changes kept Georgia off balance and contributed to our victory. So I would expect Georgia to come in with confidence having played us even for about 30 minutes of that game. It wasn’t really until the last seven or eight minutes that we pulled away.”
The Bulldogs have been slumping since late January, losing nine of its last 11 games, after a 4-2 start to SEC play. They are, however, coming off a close win looking to build more momentum before the SEC Tournament.
On Tuesday, the Bulldogs picked up a home win over Ole Miss 69-66 after nearly blowing an 11-point lead with under three minutes left. Center Russel Tchewa hit a clutch layup with 22 seconds left to hold off the Rebels as the graduate student had a great all-around game with 11 points, 10 rebounds and five assists.
The 7-footer was a problem against Auburn and Johni Broome the last time the two met with 16 points and seven rebounds.
The Tigers’ seeding for the SEC Tournament isn’t completely in their hands as Kentucky, Alabama and South Carolina could all finish with the same conference record as them.
If the above scenario occurs, Auburn owns the tiebreaker against South Carolina after the Tigers’ 40-point drubbing over the Gamecocks, meaning a win would guarantee the Tigers a top-four finish.
However, Kentucky has the tiebreaker over Auburn with the Wildcats’ win over the Tigers in Neville Arena.
Auburn and Alabama have the same conference record and split the two regular-season matchups against one another, so the tiebreaker then moves to which team has the better record against the top team in the SEC.
Both the Tigers and Crimson Tide lost to Tennessee, the SEC regular season champions, lost to Kentucky and beat South Carolina. Florida is the team highest in the SEC where there was a different outcome between Auburn and Alabama’s game against the Gators. The Tigers fell on the road to the Gators while Alabama was victorious, meaning Alabama also has the tiebreaker over Auburn.
Auburn will find out where it stands in the SEC at the conclusion of all the conference games on Saturday. Auburn and Georgia face off Saturday, March 9 at 5:30 p.m. CST inside Neville Arena. The game will be televised on SEC Network.
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Jacob Waters is a senior majoring in journalism. From Leeds, Alabama, he started with The Plainsman in August, 2021.
Twitter: @JacobWaters_
