The Auburn Tigers dropped their final home game of the season Sunday afternoon losing a second half battle to the Mississippi State Bulldogs 73-66.
The Tigers continued their second half of the season struggles right after halftime where they couldn’t knock down one of their first five field goal attempts. The Bulldogs outscored the Tigers 25-14 in the third quarter.
“I felt like they picked on a couple of people and got downhill and then found the open person,” said Auburn head coach Johnnie Harris. “So, they did a really good job of reversing the ball, moving it one extra and they knocked down some threes.”
Auburn had a chance within the last two minutes to make a comeback of some kind with Mar’shaun Bostic knocking down a three to make it a four-point game with 1:18 left in the game. However, the Bulldogs would end up putting the game away with free throws made down the stretch.
The Tigers bench was significantly outscored in this matchup with the Bulldogs outscoring them 21-7. The Bulldogs were able to capitalize primarily in the second half on points off turnovers with 12 to the Tigers three. Despite the Tigers forcing more turnovers than the Bulldogs the entire game with Mississippi State having 22 turnovers to Auburn’s 13.
“I think we did a pretty good job of taking care of the ball, but when we did it, when we did turn the ball over, they were able to get out and run and get some easy looks at it and I thought they got a couple of threes off our turnovers early in the second half.”
Deyona Gaston, in her last game in Neville Arena, scored a team high 31 points on 56% shooting from the floor. She also played solidly on the defensive end racking up four steals, while Bostic tallied six totaling 200 steals for her career.
“Marshaun came in and she was focused and ready to go,” said Harris. “I thought she was really good. She was talking getting people where they needed to be, finding the mismatches, finding the right reads. Deyona always shows up, and you know she’s just tough. She’s a tough matchup.”
The Tigers are in need of a reset going into postseason play in the SEC tournament where they will hope to keep their season alive. They will need to learn from this one in terms of playing a whole 40 minutes if they plan to make a deep run.
“We will have to go in and you know we’ve been talking about punch first, have a good start. We have to have a good start, but we also have to have a good finish. We have to keep punching, not just punch first. You have to continue to punch. Keep swinging, and that’s our message to them.
Auburn will play Florida next in the first round of the SEC tournament on Wednesday, March 5 at 7:30 p.m. CST.
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William Halliday is a junior journalism major from Memphis, Tennessee. He started with the Plainsman in fall 2022.
You can follow him on X (Twitter) at @wphalliday3
