AUBURN, Ala. – No. 1 Auburn Men’s Basketball played host to the No. 6 Florida Gators in Neville Arena this weekend, the Tigers’ fifth top-10 matchup of the season. Despite a raucous Neville Arena and a 21-1 record, Auburn fell to the Gators 90-81 in a shocker.
Auburn opened the game well, quickly jumping out to a 15-5 lead after the first six minutes of play, led by six early points from Chad Baker-Mazara. However, Florida clawed its way back, taking a 23-22 lead with 8:38 left to play in the half.
From then on, it was a tough game for the Auburn defense. Florida shot 16-28 from the floor and 7-13 from three in the first half and won the rebounding battle 19-12. The main reason why was a player returning from injury, Walter Clayton Jr.
Clayton caught fire in the first half, scoring 16 of Florida’s 48 points. The senior guard went 5-6 from the floor and 3-4 from three, a hammer blow to an Auburn defense that had been exceptional at containing teams’ leading scorers up to this point in the season.
Auburn had shooters of its own, but unfortunately the Tigers’ two leading scorers, Miles Kelly and Johni Broome, also missed 10 and 11 shots respectively. Miles Kelly had his best scoring performance of the season with 22 points on 8-18 shooting and had multiple big shots in the second half that seemed to offer Auburn a lifeline.
Johni Broome had 18 points on 8-19 shooting and seemed to struggle against Florida’s Alex Condon for much of the first half before having more success in the second. Tahaad Pettiford and Chaney Johnson also scored in double figures, with 14 and 12 points, respectively.
After the dust had settled at the end of 40 minutes, Auburn found itself looking up at a loss on the home jumbotron for the first time since Feb. 17 last season vs Kentucky, a game the Tigers lost 70-59 after many struggles in the scoring department.
However, it was the defense, not the offense, that let Auburn down in this one. The Gators made 13 threes and racked up 22 assists, both season-highs allowed by Auburn this season. Behind Clayton, who finished with 19 points, Florida also saw great nights from Alex Condon with 17 points, Thomas Haugh with 16 points, Will Richard with 12, and Denzel Aberdeen with 10.
In a game where Florida was without its second-leading scorer Alijah Martin, the Gator bench stepped up in what is widely considered this season as the toughest environment in college basketball, something that didn’t go unnoticed by Florida head coach Todd Golden.
“I thought our guys were fantastic for 40 minutes tonight,” Golden said. “Over the last 36 minutes of the game, I thought we were just about as good as you can be in an environment like this.”
On the other side, Auburn looks to bounce back from the upset. Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl prides his teams on their defense, and that defense struggled mightily tonight against the Gators.
“Our game plan defensively was to try to get the ball out of [Clayton’s] hands,” Pearl said, “And after the first couple possessions, you would never know that was our game plan.”
This Auburn team hasn’t had to bounce back in 14 games, its last loss coming all the way back on Dec. 4 at Duke. Naturally, Coach Pearl was asked how he expected his team to respond after the game. His answer?
“We’ll see at practice. Two o’clock tomorrow.”
Though Coach Pearl might find out tomorrow, the rest of the Auburn faithful will have to wait until Tuesday as Auburn travels up to Nashville to take on Vanderbilt, a team that has been notorious this season for home-court upsets. As we seem to write after each game, the SEC schedule never lets up.
