Auburn vs Ben Simmons and LSU Preview and Predictions

Auburn, coming off a loss to Oklahoma State on Saturday, looks to rebound when Ben Simmons and LSU come to town Tuesday at 6:00pm CT. Auburn (9-11, 3-5) will face LSU (13-8, 6-2) who is a team with a ton of talent, but hasn’t quite lived up to expectations this season, especially early on.

LSU is obviously led by one of the biggest names in college basketball and one of the top pro-prospects in quite awhile. Ben Simmons is a big player who rebounds well but also plays as like a point guard who gets all of his teammates involved on the way to racking up his fair share of assists. There is no debating that Ben Simmons is the best player on LSU’s team, but he’s not the only one with talent on their roster. Alongside Ben Simmons, LSU has relied on the solid play of Senior forward Keith Hornsby, Junior forward Tim Quarterman along with several other key players that have each stepped up in various games throughout the year.

The hope for Auburn is that while LSU is a very talented team with tons of weapons, they’ve severely underperformed, especially early in the year. Yes, they were missing a few players like Quarterman and Craig Victor due to injuries and other issues, but this same team with one of the best overall players in the country as well as surrounding pieces still managed to lose to teams such as the College of Charleston. The game tomorrow night will all be up to which LSU team shows up. Will they play great team basketball like they did in their wins against Kentucky and Vanderbilt, or will they rely solely on Ben Simmons and expect him to single handedly defeat Auburn. Either way, Auburn is in for a tough matchup all game long.

Last season in the SEC Tournament, Keith Hornsby shot the ball extremely well, like he does quite frequently. If him or another LSU player have a big game outside of what they normally contribute, Auburn might not have an answer. Auburn will be aiming to just hold Ben Simmons from getting a triple double and hope that the suspension to Cinmeon Bowers was a big wakeup call. Auburn will need all of their weapons to play well just to keep up with LSU’s talent since LSU can afford to have players have a less than perfect game and still score plenty of points.

Kareem Canty played well against Oklahoma State and Tyler Harris finished with a decent game, but outside of them not many others were contributing consistently on the offensive end. I don’t expect Auburn to shoot as poorly as 29% like they did against Oklahoma State, but just adding Cinmeon Bowers certainly doesn’t guarantee a big jump in shooting performance. TJ Lang and Jordon Granger need to keep shooting well like they were against Oklahoma State, but when they are, Canty and other teammates need to get them the ball more frequently so they have the ability to put points on the board as well.

Unless Kareem Canty or another player significantly outplays Ben Simmons, I don’t see Auburn standing much of a chance in this game. Auburn has the ability to beat LSU, just like the beat Kentucky and Alabama, but for that to happen, Auburn Arena has to be a much more hostile environment than it was against Oklahoma State. Maybe people will come out to see the Ben Simmons tour, but I don’t expect the most involved crowd. The team’s performance has been trending down, and fans are just starting to look towards next year. Cinmeon Bowers has made another claim that Auburn will beat LSU, but I just don’t see it happening.

I think LSU has way too many weapons and Auburn won’t be able to stop enough of them, if they can manage to slow down any of them. Depth is a big issue for Auburn and LSU will try to increase the pace of this game and they do it quite well with Ben Simmons leading the way. Auburn might surprise some of the extreme doubters, but even optimistically, I can’t see Auburn getting a win. Auburn falls to LSU 60-78 and Ben Simmons records a triple-double, the second against Auburn all time and this season.