COLLEGE STATION, Texas – Auburn men’s basketball travelled to Texas A&M on Tuesday to take on the Aggies, the Tigers’ first contest since claiming the 2024-25 SEC Regular Season Championship. However, Auburn found little success in the Lone Star State, falling by a score of 83-72.
It was clear early that the game would not be an easy one for the Tigers. Texas A&M, spurred on by a rowdy senior night crowd, quickly took an early 7-0 lead before Dylan Cardwell got Auburn on the board. The Aggies would extend the lead to 12-2, as one of the SEC’s worst three point shooting squads came out looking like sharpshooters.
Auburn struggled to get a reliable offense going for most of the second half, eventually finding success through Tahaad Pettiford and Chad Baker-Mazara to draw the game to a one point deficit, 27-28, with 3:30 left to play in the first half.
Texas A&M would respond with yet another scoring spurt, extending the Aggie lead to 40-31 with seconds to play in the first half following a made three-pointer by Zhuric Phelps. Auburn was able to find a clutch shot of its own, though, as Baker-Mazara fired a three as the buzzer sounded and drained it to keep the Tigers within six points at the half.
The Aggies came back just as strong to start the second half as they had been in the first, quickly extending the lead to 12 points through the first five minutes of the second half. As the Texas A&M offense seemed to run like a well oiled machine, the Auburn attack seemed stuck in the mud, unable to move the ball effectively.
Much of the Auburn difficulty stemmed from a lack of the Tigers’ main point guard, Denver Jones. The senior leader usually functions as Auburn's main facilitator on offense and its main perimeter defender on the other end of the court. Without the presence of Jones, Auburn seemed lost, disjointed, and, as the game moved on, even desperate.
As a result, Texas A&M remained able to keep Auburn at an arm’s length through most of the second half, with the Tigers never able to consistently cut the lead to any less than six points. On top of the lack of their leader, the Auburn shooters were struggling. Auburn shot just 9-22 from three on the night, a stark contrast to its performance at Kentucky just days prior.
Auburn also struggled to hold on to the basketball and rebound. The Tigers lost the turnover battle 13-11, but struggled immensely to score off of any turnovers they forced. The rebounding battle was more lopsided, as Texas A&M dominated Auburn on the glass 41-25, one of Auburn’s worst rebounding performances of the season, something Auburn Head Coach Bruce Pearl was clearly unhappy about.
“There’s no excuse to give up that many offensive rebounds,” Coach Pearl said. “I give Texas A&M all the credit… But we’re better than that. Not tonight.”
When the dust settled, Auburn found itself staring at a loss on the scoreboard for just the third time this season in a game where it never held a lead, the first such game this season. The game was a display of physical domination from the Aggies, not something that happens to many Bruce Pearl teams at Auburn.
“Not many teams outplay us or outwork us,” Coach Pearl said. “That’s been a pretty consistent thing for us. But Texas A&M clearly outplayed us and outworked us tonight.”
Auburn will need to rebound quickly, because the next contest for the Tigers is the regular season finale on Saturday against the rival Alabama Crimson Tide in Neville Arena, senior day for this senior heavy Tiger squad.
Auburn handled the Tide in Coleman Coliseum earlier this season, but Alabama has its sights set on revenge for the final game of the 2024-25 regular season.
