Bryce Brown and Auburn Make it Rain from Three and Wash Out Arkansas

Auburn snapped a seven-game losing streak, got its first win on the road in the SEC, and won for the first time in Bud Walton Arena tonight by a score of 90-86. Auburn (10-15, 4-9) got significant contribution from almost all major players to give Arkansas (12-14, 5-8) its third straight loss.

While I didn’t expect this game at all, I said in my pregame preview and predictions that if Auburn wanted to stand a chance of knocking off Arkansas, it would come with success behind the three-point line. The Tigers did just that.

Bryce Brown led the way with 27 points on 9-of-14 shooting from three. TJ Lang added 17 points while shooting 5-of-6 from three, including two threes in a row in the final two minutes right before fouling out. As a team, Auburn shot 65.2 percent from three and 61.1 percent from the field, which is over double, and triple, its previous games.

After scoring just 45 points eight days ago against Tennessee, Auburn exploded for 90 points tonight against Arkansas. Auburn had four players with 14-plus points.

Cinmeon Bowers had another great game, and closed the door towards the end as he finished 6-of-11 from the free throw line. Bowers, Auburn’s 6-foot-7 point guard, finished with 14 points, 10 rebounds, and 6 assists. Tyler Harris also got back on track with a solid game of 19 points on 8-of-11 shooting, plus 5 rebounds and 5 assists of his own.

Tonight the Tigers showed a lot of energy and resilience to keep sticking with Arkansas whenever they pulled away. At one point early in the second half, Arkansas went on a 15-2 run to jump out to a 9 point lead, and it was starting to look like another game that Auburn was going to let slip away. Instead, Bruce Pearl smartly called a timeout to regroup his players. Auburn came out of the timeout exactly like it needed to and almost immediately cut the lead back down to 3 points. This game was incredibly impressive for the Tigers and should serve as a much needed confidence boost.

Defensively, this wasn’t the Tigers strongest game. Auburn allowed Arkansas; big three of Anthlon Bell, Moses Kingsley, and Dusty Hannahs to score 21, 20, and 18 points respectively.

Hannahs had several key three-pointers that always seemed to hold off Auburn’s runs and keep the Tigers at bay. Hannahs was 4-of-9 from three on the night, but it just wasn’t enough.

Despite Auburn allowing Arkansas to score 86 points, the Tigers were able to successfully go back to their strategy of just outscoring the opponent in an up-tempo game.

While Auburn struggled to keep the ball out of the basket against Arkansas, Horace Spencer had another dominant game around the rim. Spencer finished with a season-high 7 blocks and 5 rebounds. The freshman forward also showed some skill on the offensive end with a couple of big finishes.

Almost all season, especially recently, I’ve had to try really hard to be one of the few people to find positives on this Auburn basketball team. Tonight it’s much harder to find negatives. Tonight Auburn didn’t take great care of the ball and ended up giving the ball away 21 times, but that was easily overlooked with a big W in the box score, and good play in almost every other area.

I can’t reiterate enough how much fun that games was. It’s been really hard to watch Auburn lately, but this game was exciting and well played almost all night. Even if Auburn had let the game slip away in the end, there was no question that the Tigers had played one of their best games all year, especially in their recent downward fall.

While a 10-15 record is nothing to celebrate, given all that Auburn has been through, this game is a great cause for celebration. These players have kept fighting despite being extremely undermanned, and tonight it finally paid off.

The offense started firing on all cylinders and the shots finally started to fall again. As a result, Auburn gets to fly home with a win for the first time since December 2 after the Tigers took down Coastal Carolina. Since then Auburn had lost 10 straight road games before tonight.

All losing streaks are ended tonight, and the Tigers will look to build off of this win this Saturday when Ole Miss comes to Auburn Arena to face the Tigers at 4: p.m. Central.

What a fantastic game tonight. It’s great to get another win.

War Eagle!

Also, for the few crazy people that were saying Bruce Pearl was headed in the same direction as Tony Barbee, this 10th win now makes sure that we finish better than the 9-23 record that Barbee had in his third season.