Auburn suffered its first loss of the season to Duke on the road as the small things snowballed for the Tigers. The Tigers fell to the Blue Devils in Cameron Indoor Stadium in a style of death by a thousand paper cuts — undone by ability to get to the charity stripe, turnovers, foul trouble and early rebounding.
“We played okay,” Head Coach Pearl said about the Tiger’s showing. “But we have to play better than that and I give them all credit.”
Auburn overall played solidly on the surface shooting 45% from the field with ten 3-pointers. The Tigers had four players exceed double digits in points; Miles Kelly, Johni Broome, Chad Baker-Mazara and Tahaad Pettiford, with Broome and Pettiford both accounting for 20 points each. The Tiger’s also shot 10-for-12 from the free throw line. The Tigers even out-rebounded the Blue Devils with 39 to only 34.
With all these positives it seems unlikely that Auburn would struggle to find a way to win but there were other aspects of the game that the Tigers fell short in. The most notable is definitely Auburn doubling Duke in turnovers eight to four. While the Tigers only got one point off these turnovers, the Blue Devils were able to create 13 points which would end up alone being more than the difference in the game.
The Tigers got out to an early 13-2 lead to start the game but slowly allowed the Blue Devil’s to creep back in energizing their home crowd. Once Duke took the lead they trailed only once more by one point and then never fell behind again. They were fueled by Auburn getting into foul trouble while also playing more clean and physical basketball. By the end of the first half they had outrebounded the visiting Tigers 24 to 15 while getting 10 points off of fast breaks as compared to Auburn getting none.
“I thought in many ways they played more physically than we did,” Pearl said about Duke. “And you know they made some real tough one on one plays late in the first half, they caught us in transition, after getting up to such a great start.”
The Tigers struggled with foul trouble even early on as they had 20 total fouls with all three of their big men having two fouls each by the end of the first half. Broome would eventually foul out of the game while the other two Dylan Cardwell and Chaney Johnson finished with three each. With all of the fouls the Tigers committed, the Blue Devils led by star freshman Cooper Flagg ended up going 17-for-27 from the line with Flagg having eight of those points.
Duke was able to hang with Auburn in a way that many others hadn't early into the season as they posted a slightly better 3-point and field goal percentage while also rebounding at nearly the same rate. They found a way to win by doing the little things right and taking advantage of Auburn’s mistakes.
The Tigers look to bounce back and continue to clean up the details after falling for the first time this season as they host the Richmond Spiders at Neville Arena on Sunday, Dec, 8 at 11 a.m. CST.
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Reid is a freshman, exploratory major. He joined the Plainsman in the fall of 2024.
You can follow him on X (Twitter) at @ReidFarris2
