Earlier this week, the Auburn basketball team welcomed the Arkansas Razorbacks to Neville Arena for a midweek matchup. It was head coach John Calipari's first trip to the Plains as the Razorbacks' head coach, and his team was playing for a chance to make it into the NCAA tournament.
Arkansas came into the game with a 15-10 overall record and a 4-8 conference record, and the stakes were high for Coach Cal's team. Meanwhile, the Auburn Tigers were riding the high of beating Alabama and did not come out playing their best basketball.
Auburn trailed with just three minutes left in the game and only made four three-pointers in the entire game. It was a slow offensive night for the Tigers, but they pulled it off in the end, keeping the Razorbacks from pulling off another major upset on the road. Here's what the team had to say after the game.
Head coach Bruce Pearl on the turnovers, per AL.com:
“I just thought we were sloppy in some of our passes and slopped through things and didn’t execute. We run a very simple middle ball screen, and we stepped back to enter our offense, and they picked one off, which you could tell all game long they were close. And our guards didn’t really react to that. Not a good effort. Not a good offensive night for Auburn at all.”
Chad Baker-Mazara on the team's depth, per Auburn Rivals:
“We've got a lot of different weapons on our team. When one's not working, we can go down the list and see which one may work. So with us, if the tray ball don't fall, we've got some guys down there in the paint that are taking care of business since the season started.”
Pearl on maintaining defensive effort despite poor shooting, per Auburn Undercover:
"We didn't let our lack of shooting the basketball affect us on the defensive end, which I thought was really, really important. I thought we got some clean looks and did not make shots. And sometimes -- we could've been here in a loss -- just didn't make shots. Got some pretty good looks."
Auburn basketball returns to action when they host Georgia this Saturday in Neville Arena.