Steven Pearl doesn’t want his first season on the Plains to end without an NCAA Tournament berth attached to it, and on Wednesday afternoon his Auburn team that is squarely on the bubble played with fire.
The 12th-seeded Tigers trailed 13th-seeded Mississippi State, 33-30, at halftime, and Auburn was 20 minutes away from a first-round SEC Tournament exit that would’ve sealed its NCAA fate. But then the 2nd half happened, and the Tigers came out with a vengeance, outscoring the Bulldogs, 49-28, in a 79-61 victory that pushed them to a second-round matchup with Tennessee on Thursday afternoon.
Pearl has been around the college basketball world for a long time as the son of legendary Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl, and he knows how things work at this time of year. He also knows that Auburn limped into Nashville with a 7-11 SEC regular season record that gave it absolutely 0 margin for error this week.
The Tigers passed their first test, albeit with a little bit of turbulence, and Pearl joined the SEC Now crew afterward with star of the game Kevin Overton to applaud his team’s resilience.
“Our guys didn’t panic. They stayed locked in,” Pearl said. “We knew this was a game of runs, and our guys did a great job of staying dialed (in). Our guys did a good job of hanging in there and beating a good team.”
Pearl wasn’t providing lip service about Mississippi State being a good team. Josh Hubbard put 46 points on Pearl’s team last month in Starkville in a victory over the Tigers, but this time around Auburn held Hubbard to just 22 points as it lived to see another day in Nashville. Hubbard was held in check and the Tigers exploded offensively in the final 20 minutes after being held to 30 points in that ragged first half.
“We just made shots,” was Pearl’s simple explanation for the difference on offense in the 2 halves. “We got a lot of really good looks in the first half. I told our guys, don’t be discouraged right now because we’re getting clean ones. Continue to trust each other and continue to share the basketball and continue to be aggressive. Because eventually, they’ll fall, and they obviously did.”
Auburn stayed alive for an NCAA Tournament berth because it’s still alive for an SEC Tournament title, and here are Kalshi’s current odds on who it believes has the best chance to prevail on Sunday in Nashville:
Prediction Markets Men's SEC Basketball Tournament Winner Learn more about Prediction Markets Kalshi Florida 59% Arkansas 13% Alabama 11% Vanderbilt 8% Tennessee 7% Georgia 3% Kentucky 3% Texas A&M 2% Auburn 1% Missouri 1% PredictSteven Pearl on Auburn’s crucial first-round victory: ‘Our guys didn’t panic’ Saturday Down South.
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