Auburn basketball lost their third game of the season on Saturday night falling 97-68 to the Arizona Wildcats on the road.
It was the Tigers second lopsided loss of the season. Last week, Auburn lost 102-72 versus Michigan in the Player’s Era Festival that was held in Las Vegas. Auburn head coach Steven Pearl put Arizona in the same classification as Michigan following the game, and says that the loss was needed to show his team where the elite teams of college basketball are playing at this point in the season.
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“We told our guys we’re going to have to have a lot of step-up,” Pearl said postgame. “We didn’t have a ton of that tonight. It’s disappointing any time you get exposed like that. I think there’s a pretty wide margin between Michigan, Arizona and the rest of college basketball. It was good for our guys to see where the bar is at because we’ve got a long way to go.”
Here are five key stats from the Tigers loss on Saturday night.
Arizona 34-9 run
Auburn opened the game playing well and looked like they were prepared to handle the road atmosphere. The Tigers got out to a 15-10 start after Tahaad Pettiford connected on a three-pointer with 13:47 in the first half. Arizona’s Jaden Bradley then hit a three of his own, and the huge run began for the Wildcats. Arizona went on a 34-9 run after that Pettiford shot, and built a 44-24 lead as halftime was nearing. With 9:24 until halftime, Pettiford scored on a layup to make the score 24-21 but Auburn was not able to tie or take the lead. Arizona’s Ivan Kharchenkov connected on a jumper to push it back to 26-21 and the Tigers were never that close again.
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Big night for Tahaad Pettiford
Pettiford has shown he will play well when Auburn is away from Neville Arena. On Saturday night, he scored 30 points on 10 of 19 shooting and hit five three-pointers. He also had the highlight of the game for the Tigers with a dunk on a fastbreak early in the game. In away games, Pettiford is averaging 22.4 points per game and is shooting 48%. However, at home this season Pettiford is averaging nine points per game, and shooting just 25%. He is 4 for 31 at home from the three-point line.
Bad night for the other Tigers
While Pettiford did have a big scoring output, the rest of the team only scored 38 points. Keyshawn Hall had his worse game of the season with just 13 points. Outside of Pettiford, Auburn was 11 of 44 on field goals and 1 of 16 from beyond the three-point line. For Hall, he was 3 of 11 with three turnovers and zero assists. For this team to be successful, they will need both Pettiford and Hall to play well on the same night. That has been a rare occurrence through 10 games.
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Lack of offensive rhythm
Keeping with the theme of the offensive struggles versus Arizona, the Tigers did not pick up many assists. Auburn had just seven assists in the game. Auburn also committed 15 turnovers that led to 21 points for Arizona. This is after they had 20 that resulted in 22 points for NC State in their previous game. Head coach Steven Pearl emphasized after the win over the Wolfpack that the offense needed to play better for a win over Arizona. In the Tigers three losses they are averaging just 9.3 assists per game.
Arizona paint dominance
The Wildcats dominated in the paint outscoring Auburn 60-24. The starting frontcourt for Arizona of Koa Peat, Ivan Kharachenkov, and Motiejus Krivas scored 38 points. The rebounding margin was not huge with Arizona winning that statistic 40-34, but the Wildcats did not miss as many shots as Auburn shooting 61%. Auburn’s weakness appears to be their size in the frontcourt and Arizona exposed that on Saturday night.
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This article originally appeared on Auburn Wire: Auburn basketball five key stats from Arizona loss
