Following the SEC regular season championship clinching win at Kentucky last Saturday, the top-ranked Tigers suffered just their third loss of the season, falling 83-72 at No. 22 Texas A&M Tuesday night – marking the Aggies’ first ever win over an AP No. 1 team.
With Buzz Williams as Texas A&M’s coach the Aggies improved to a 6-2 record, winning four of the last five contests, over Bruce Pearl and the Tigers.
“We just got physically punched in the mouth. You know, we just got physically run out of here. It's how Texas A&M plays,” Pearl said.
The Aggies led wire-to-wire on Tuesday, jumping out to a 12-2 run to start the game and maintaining a lead throughout despite Auburn cutting the lead down to a single point prior to the half.
The Tigers, though, could never get over the hump due to its struggle at the boards – getting out-rebounded by the Aggies by a +16 margin. Auburn racked up just 16 defensive rebounds compared to Texas A&M’s 24 offensive rebounds.
“When you get 16 defensive rebounds and they get 24 offensive rebounds, that's going to be a deal. Every team is going to look at that and go, ‘Hey, the way to beat Auburn is to just be physical on them, right?’ And we just didn't step up,” Pearl said.
Auburn also struggled in the turnover department, recording 13 which directly produced 18 points for Texas A&M.
“They just physically dominated the game. And if you look at Florida, the best teams on our schedule, what does Florida do? They physically dominated us. Texas A&M physically dominated us. We didn't have a physical advantage against Duke,” Pearl said.
On senior night for the Aggies, Williams’ squad had five players score in double-figures – four of which were seniors – with Zhuric Phelps leading the way with 19 points, shooting 6-for-16 from the field and 5-for-10 from the charity stripe.
Texas A&M, who averaged 23.4% from deep in home conference games entering tonight, knocked down 36% of its shots from beyond the arc, 9-for-25.
The Tigers’ Tahaad Pettiford also had 19 points himself, shooting 6-for-10 from deep, in the absence of Denver Jones who didn’t see any action tonight after an injury at Kentucky last Saturday.
Similarly to the win in Lexington, KY, Auburn’s trio of guards; Pettiford, Miles Kelly and Chad Baker-Mazara, produced the bulk of the Tigers’ offense, recording 46 of Auburn’s 72 points.
“He did fine,” Pearl said of Pettiford’s first start of his collegiate career. “There was a lot on him. You know, he did fine. I thought Chad Baker did really well backing up the point guard position. You know, we obviously missed Denver Jones as our most physical defender. Clearly missed him.”
After just nine points from Johni Broome last Saturday against Kentucky, the national player of the year candidate recorded just eight points, shooting 4-for-9 from the field, against the Aggies – marking the first time Broome has recorded single-digit points in back-to-back games this season.
“Scouting reports out,” Pearl said. “It's out alright. The best way to beat Auburn is to hit them in the mouth. Then, we're either going to be able to handle the physicality of the play, or not.”
The top-ranked Tigers will look to bounce back and complete the season sweep of arch-rival No. 7 Alabama on Saturday, March 8 at 1:30 p.m. CST in the regular season finale inside of Neville Arena.
“We'll be excited about playing at home on Saturday. We've got the conference championship wrapped up. We'd like to try to, you know, wrap up the number one seed,” Pearl said.
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
Patrick is a junior from Auburn, Alabama, double majoring in journalism and marketing. He started with The Plainsman in the fall of 2022.
You can follow him on X (Twitter) at @patrickabingham
