Alabama regains its mojo and Auburn’s lost season continues

 

 

 

TUSCALOOSA — Alabama experienced a nearly perfect expression of nirvana Saturday night, performing a thorough colonoscopy of Auburn for the first 25 minutes before the anesthesia wore off and hearing its fans pile upon Tigers coach Steven Pearl with taunts of “nepo baby” for the favor (favor?) his father did by ensuring he got the job.

Thanks, dad, for the special treatment, something that might backfire miserably on both. Auburn is now in a surreal place: A coach looking for a team and a team looking for a coach.

The No. 16-ranked Crimson Tide did what was required of it by the NCAA tournament selection committee and a bloodthirsty gathering of 13,000 fans at Coleman Coliseum, stomping to as much as a 28-point lead before settling for a 96-84 win to close the regular season.

“We got pushed around,” Pearl said. “They punked us.”

The win restored some confidence to Alabama, which was embarrassed at Georgia earlier in the week, and it goes into the postseason having won nine of its last 10 games and with a likely No. 3 to No. 5 seed in the NCAA tournament.

What is less obvious is if the Tide is as good as it looked for a half or if the Tigers are that bad.

Alabama, which has the nation’s highest-scoring offense, showed once again it can win even if it doesn’t make a lot of three-pointers and that it can rebound, especially on the offensive glass. If it can do all that against an accomplished team with a legitimate defense, the Tide’s high-water mark in the NCAA tournament could be far inland.

“If we’d made some free throws, we’d have scored a hundred on them,” said Alabama coach Nate Oats.

Mobile’s Labaron Philon — who likely played his last game at the coliseum before being selected as a lottery pick or at least a mid-first-round choice in the NBA Draft this summer — went out to an ovation after scoring 21 points and opening up Auburn’s guts in the paint with his standard wizardry of nearly invisible passes and moves that made the Tigers’ defense appear to have been recruited out of a morgue.

“I don’t know what they were trying to do,” mused Philon, the SEC’s No. 2 scorer at 21.5 points per game, “but being able to get into the paint with ease opened the game up.”

Auburn was trying to extend its defense to stop the nation’s best three-point shooting team — it’s called “building out” — which exposed the Tigers’ tails to driving layups. The Tide made 17 of 28 and outscored Auburn 58-32 in the paint.

“Coach told us to stay aggressive because we (shoot) a lot of threes and people are starting to build out,” Philon said.

But the Tigers’ defense was so bad Saturday night that some of Alabama’s layups and baseline drives appeared to be going through a door that was coming off its hinges.

At one point, Philon was given an open three as Auburn’s players backed away, fearful of another knife in the stomach, and he had time to consider taking the shot, not taking it or asking for a bottle of Dom Perignon to celebrate reaching 1,000 career points in less than two seasons. The Baron popped the cork, of course, and made the net dance.

 

The lost season

 

It was a nearly perfect half for the Tide, which shot at 54%, happily vacuumed up 13 turnovers and scored on 23 of 32 possessions. What Philon and his teammates aimed at the basket either went in or was often collected and turned into a second shot, as Alabama outrebounded the Tigers 42-28, including 19-9 on the offensive boards.

“I’m sure a lot of it was, you know, not going and finding a body and just turning and looking at the ball,” Pearl said.

If Auburn’s players and coach looked lost, it’s a reflection of a lost season, which continued along its mysterious way at 16-15 overall and 7-11 in the SEC a year after reaching the Final Four.

The same team that beat SEC regular-season champion Florida on the road has long since devolved into a team that beats only itself. As the Coleman crowd turned its blowtorches on the Tigers when Alabama roared to a 20-point first-half lead, Pearl stood frozen, hands behind his back. He could have been imitating someone bound for the firing squad. All he needed was a blindfold and a cigarette.

At least Pearl owns his mistakes and among his latest, he said, is not using Blake Muschalek more. If you’re wondering who that is, he’s a 6-3 junior guard who has just 12 points all season but apparently could make the Tigers’ defense better if he got off the bench more.

“The only guy who was really solid the entire time was Blake,” Pearl said. “We’ve got to keep him in the game. We can’t pull him out because the lead had gone from like 28 to 15 when he was in the game. We subbed him out and they pushed back up to 21. We’re going to play him more in the SEC tournament because he helps us defensively. He gets us organized.”

At least somebody does.

Pearl is likeable, perhaps too likeable. He has repeatedly apologized to Auburn fans this season as the program his father built from nothing has slid into mediocrity. But the one who should apologize is Bruce Pearl for resigning just before preseason practice started, giving the school administration no choice but to make his son his successor. Pops has publicly admitted to nepotism.

If his son has a season similar to this next year, there won’t be a year three for him and Auburn might actually perform a legitimate search for a head coach. That would be regrettable in many ways, as the Pearls’ reputation will be tarnished and the momentum they created for Tigers basketball as a national basketball power will disappear.

 

Tide has advantages

 

Oats — who has won an SEC-best 88 league games since coming to Tuscaloosa and reasserted Alabama as the state’s top college basketball program with three straight wins over Auburn — has no such problems. He has done a good job going 23-8 overall and 13-5 in the SEC with injuries that have forced him into using 13 starting lineups.

His defense has played much better lately — “We’ve forced double digits in turnovers four of the last five games. It’s been a point of emphasis” — but he didn’t like losing the large lead Saturday night, which he considered a bad omen.

“We haven’t done a great job closing games out when we’ve had leads,” he said. “I told the guys after the game that if you start playing the scoreboard and not finishing games in March, you will get sent home early.”

The Tide has some advantages going into the SEC tournament in Nashville this week. It’s the No. 2 seed and has a double bye, which will give its players extra rest.

Alabama will need it because its likely opponent will be a team the Tide has lost to.

“Unless an upset happens, we’ll be playing Georgia or Texas, somebody we’re 0-1 against,” Oats said.

Philon doesn’t want another loss to either or to anyone else for that matter. He enjoyed the adulation from the fans when he came off the court for the last time Saturday night and wants to conclude his career by taking the Tide to its second Final Four before he goes to the NBA as a sophomore.

“I’m trying to be in the moment,” he said. “It’s great to see all the fans and people who just notice and have a big impact on my career. Just being able to play another game after another game is a great feeling. I’m pretty sure it’s getting close. We’re going to go on a run here and we’re going to put everything into Alabama basketball.”

Pearl knows Auburn is in a desperate situation and must go deep into the SEC tournament to ensure an NCAA bid, especially since it has lost eight of its last 10 games.

“It’s win or go home,” he said. “I don’t know what more urgency you need at this point.”

Unfortunately for Pearl, win or go home does not just apply to the SEC tournament.