Auburn star Keyshawn Hall is surrounded by Vanderbilt defenders Tuesday night at Neville Arena. Hall scored just 13 points in the Tigers’ 84-76 loss. (Zach Bland/Auburn University)
Auburn’s Tahaad Pettiford takes a shot over Vanderbilt’s Tyler Nickel Tuesday night on the way to 21 points. (Zach Bland/Auburn University)
AUBURN, Ala. — In the aftermath of a third straight SEC loss Tuesday night, Auburn coach Steven Pearl repeatedly pressed his left index finger to his temple as he performed a painful self-examination.
“People are going to be panicking right now,” he predicted after the Tigers led for only 20 seconds in an 84-76 loss to No. 19 Vanderbilt at Neville Arena, the Commodores’ first win on the Plains in a decade.
But Pearl said he won’t be among those engaging in hysteria after Auburn dropped to 14-10 overall and 5-6 in the SEC, the first time the Tigers have had a losing league record through 11 games since 2021 and not even a year after they appeared in their second Final Four.
“While the results haven’t been there, this team has continued to get better,” Pearl insisted. “We’ve got to just trust what we’re doing. I’ve got to do a better job getting these guys prepared and I’ve got to do a better job of making adjustments. … I thought the effort was there. The execution wasn’t but part of that’s on me.”
The Commodores (20-4, 7-4) — who started the season 16-0 — gave a textbook clinic on how to win a road game: They controlled the tempo, made the high-percentage shots (at one point winning 20-6 in the paint and making 11 of 19 layups), rarely turned the basketball over (just seven times) and made their free throws (26 of 30, led by point guard Tyler Tanner’s 12 of 13 and 25 points total).
“He’s got a baby face but he is very, very competitive and we’re feeding off his competitiveness,” Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington said of Tanner, who also had six assists and, recognizing Auburn has no rim protectors (it had just three blocks), broke down the Tigers’ post defense. That led to 22 points from 6-10 forward Jalen Washington, who was averaging 8.7.
“That wasn’t something that was on my bingo card,” Pearl said.
Neither was getting only five fast-break points despite winning the boards 36-27, nor was star guard Keyshawn Hall — the SEC’s second-leading scorer at 21 points per game — scoring just 13 points before Pearl took him out for good with 12½ minutes left.
“I just went with the guys that I thought put us in the best position to get back into the game,” Pearl said. “That group did a really good job of just grinding and fighting and clawing back in. Every time Key had the ball, they were plugging the paint and made it really difficult for him. Our offense wasn’t really in sync when he was on the floor, so I wanted to give us a different look.”
Neville Arena also had a different look, as Auburn fell behind by as many as 15 points in the second half, a reality that made The Jungle as quiet as crabgrass most of the evening.
“I want to continue to thank our fans for hanging in there with this team as we’re trying to work through some things,” a contrite Pearl said. “They did their part, we didn’t do ours. For that, I apologize. I’ve got to do a better job as their coach in these situations.”
While Pearl can hope Hall’s benching did some good — it might have gotten his attention and the Tigers showed they could rally without him — there were other reasons for the defeat.
Auburn played too much individual one-on-one offense — “Pass the ball!” one irritated fan yelled after a KeShawn Murphy drive netted nothing in the second half — and the Tigers made only 11 of 27 layups. Hall was 0 of 6.
“We wanted to take away the uncontested layups,” Byington said. “We did a great job of getting vertical, of trying to make them score over us. We wanted to see if they’d make the pass out of there.”
They didn’t do it enough.
Auburn didn’t get to the free-throw line enough despite the concerted effort to attack inside, leading to frustration and two technical fouls (one on Hall and one on Pearl) that helped the Commodores survive the Tigers’ late transformation into a basketball team that suddenly played with ardor.
Auburn cut the lead to 70-66 with 2:42 to go and trailed by just six before A.K. Okereke’s 3-pointer and the first technical foul of Pearl’s career led to what proved to be two winning free throws from Tanner for an insurmountable 77-66 lead.
Pearl didn’t like a foul against Sebastian Williams-Adams about 50 seconds earlier but denied he reacted nastily.
“As (the referee’s) running down, I said, ‘That was a big call’ and he teed me up and said I cussed at him,” Pearl said. “I was mic’d up tonight, so maybe I’ve gotta check the tapes. I’ve tried to pride myself in not really getting after the officials. It felt like a big shift in momentum on a call like that.”
It was but the game was already lost because Pearl conceded the Tigers were too lackadaisical defensively until the last eight minutes, when Auburn started grinding down the lead and all the Tarzans and Janes in The Jungle started screeching and swinging vine to vine from the rafters.
“I’ve got to do some things defensively to get us a little more active, flying around and trying to be a little more aggressive like we were at the end,” Pearl said. “We can’t let teams be comfortable in what they’re doing. We switched up defensively in the last 10 minutes and it was effective but we’ve got to do that earlier.”
Meanwhile, guard Tahaad Pettiford followed his 25 points against Alabama Saturday with 21 Tuesday night, including 5 of 7 layups.
“Tahaad took some coaching this week about his off-ball positioning and I want to give him some credit on that because I’ve been pretty harsh on Tahaad in some of these pressers because he’s one of my best players and I expect a lot out of him,” Pearl said. “I thought he really battled tonight.”
In the end, none of it was enough to earn a Quad 1 victory over a Vanderbilt team that is 14th in the KenPom rankings. The Tigers are 30th and can bolster their NCAA tournament resume with three of their next four games against Quad 1 teams.
But unless Pearl makes some changes stick and Auburn starts playing as if it has something to prove — as the Commodores did — it won’t last long in the postseason.
