Auburn fights through opening night struggles to beat Georgia Southern 83-74

AP Photo/Julie Bennett

Entering into a new season of college basketball, teams across the country are filled with high hopes and expectations about what they can accomplish together as a program.

On the other side of the coin, each team also has a set of question marks they will need to address if they are to meet those expectations.

For Auburn, their goals as a program remain high after making their first Final Four appearance last season. However, with five key contributors from last year’s run now gone, and as a group of promising, new faces look to take their place, Auburn now has their own set of question marks heading into the new season and it showed on Tuesday night.

Despite experiencing their fair share of struggles throughout the game, the number 24 ranked Tigers managed to defeat a tough Georgia Southern Eagles squad by a score of 83-74. Head Coach Bruce Pearl said before the contest he expected his team to struggle during their early season slate.

“If we struggle, which won’t surprise me with the new pieces, it’ll just give us more things that we’ll need to work on,” said Pearl to Josh Vitale of the Montgomery Advertiser.

Some of those struggles happened on the defensive end. 

There were moments of miscommunication and slow rotations, which led to a lot of open shots for the opposition. The Tigers picked up a quick collection of fouls due to their tendency to gamble for blocks and steals rather than staying disciplined. They also had trouble slowing down Georgia Southern’s quicker players, allowing a multitude of downhill drives for layups.

“They had their way with us,” said Pearl, “We weren’t able to disrupt them as much as we would’ve liked.”

Auburn wound up giving up a total of 74 points for the game, with Georgia Southern shooting 47.4 percent from the field. Now, this Eagle’s team is no slouch when it comes to offense, as they averaged around 82 points per game last season. However, Auburn allowed their opponents to score only 68.8 points a game and kept opposing foes to 43.7 percent from the field during last year’s campaign, meaning, the defensive end will be an area Pearl will want to work on moving forward.

Offensively, Auburn did a poor job of handling the defensive pressure put on by the opposition and were sped up as a result. The Tigers coughed up the ball a total of 21 times over the course of the night, a stark contrast from the 11.7 turnovers per game they gave up in the 2018-19 season. 

Auburn is also in the midst of transitioning from a perimeter centric offense, to a more inside minded approach, but they had their trouble getting the ball inside to Austin Wiley and Anfernee Mclemore.

Fortunately, not all was gloom and doom in Auburn Arena, as there were a variety of bright spots throughout the contest.

Samir Doughty displayed his ability to steer the ship on both ends. He lead the game in scoring with 20 points on 60 percent shooting and came up with four of the team’s six steals. The Philadelphia native also hit some clutch free throws at the end of the game to prevent a late comeback attempt by the Eagles.

“Samir made plays,” said Pearl, “I thought he had great composure and gave us great confidence.”

Danjel Purifoy showed the confidence to shoot the ball from deep by hitting three of his seven three point attempts. The senior forward finished with 13 points on the night. Austin Wiley, who was recently voted on to the preseason All-SEC Second Team, pitched in 13 points along with nine rebounds.

Auburn also saw production from their new, young recruits. Freshmen Issacc Okoro and Devon Cambridge contributed 12 and six points respectively while flashing their defensive versatility on the opposite end of the floor.

The pieces for a solid team are there for Auburn, the challenge moving forward will be putting those pieces together into a new, complete team that can accomplish the goals the Auburn family wants them to achieve.

“We just have to keep growing,” said Pearl, “This team is going to get better fast, at least I hope so.”

Auburn will have another opportunity to improve and grow on Friday as they take on the Davidson Wildcats in the Veteran’s Classic. Tipoff is set for 5:00 p.m. CST.