Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl previews the Tigers’ matchup against Kentucky in Rupp Arena on Saturday.
Opening Statement…
“Good afternoon. I had to check my clock to see if it was afternoon or not. We’re going up to Kentucky. Kentucky is playing better. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team as good as this whose record is what the record is. They’ve led in nine of their 13 losses in the second half, and for reasons of inexperience or other teams making plays – obviously it’s Kentucky – a little bad luck to have lost as many games. You look at them, they’re playing hard, they’re playing with more confidence, they’re playing better than they were earlier in the season as you would expect young teams to do or new teams to do that get put together. In evaluating our league, I’ve always in the preseason picked the six or seven teams every year that I think can get there. I don’t always pick us as accurately, but I get the other ones right most of the time. I still had Kentucky in the upper division in our league. I had them as an NCAA Tournament team. All the other teams that are there, I had them. I still think this Kentucky team can get there. Whether they win out in the regular season or whether they have to win the SEC Tournament, they’re playing well enough and there’s enough there for them to get there. And while I think the league is very competitive, there isn’t anybody in this league that they can’t beat. That’s not newsworthy. This isn’t rocket science. I don’t think anybody else hasn’t come up with that. So in getting ready for them – keeping them off the offensive glass, stopping them in transition, finding ways to score over their length. All I can tell you is we were 7 for 28, shooting 25 percent, and we led 17-16 at Auburn. I don’t know that mathematically that’s even remotely possible. They played really good defense. We missed some shots. But when you’re shooting 7 for 28, you should be completely out of the game, and we weren’t. So I’m going to give our team credit for the fact that we played so hard against Kentucky. That was probably the hardest we’ve played all year long. While the Missouri win, mathematically, is probably our best win, being the No. 12 team in the country – gosh, we played well against Kentucky. We played hard. If we shoot like that again in Rupp, it won’t be close. And if it wasn’t for our defense and our effort and energy, we would’ve gotten blown out at home. So I want to give our guys credit for getting that one. Obviously, we’ve got a lot of work to do at Rupp. The history speaks to itself. We played better defensively against Vanderbilt. Jamal (Johnson) made shots in the first half. Sharife (Cooper) controlled the game in the second half. We made shots as a team in the second half. So if we can put it together, we can play competitively. But again, with six games to go in the regular season, if we don’t play better than we did at Vanderbilt, it will be hard to win. That’s kind of where we’re at right now.”
On the challenge of playing at Rupp Arena…
“It’s a great challenge. They’ve got great home-court advantage. There will four or five thousand people in the building. But the thing I talked to my team about is this. Wes Flanigan played at Rupp twice during his career. Most of the time, Auburn is going to get Kentucky once every couple of years. If you’re here for three years, you might only play them at Rupp once. Playing in that building is an honor. It just is. That’s one of the great houses in all of basketball, right there with the Boston Garden. You’re going to remember the games you played there. You just are. Like forever. So the way I look at it for our guys is an opportunity. You’re going to remember how you did at Rupp five years, 10 years, 50 years from now.”
On end of season plans and going out on a positive note…
“We talk about trying to get better. I am very honest with them; I try to be really honest with you [the media]. The things I say to you guys [the media] I say to them. They understand that there is not a game left in our schedule that if we don’t play better, we’ll win. That has been our focus all year long. Transition defense, trying to keep people off the boards being more physical, and stop turning the ball over so much. The same things the media hears from me over and over again. I was encouraged by one of my assistants this morning. We were visiting about our game plan and frustrated that we are making some of the same mistakes repeatedly, and not growing as fast as I would like to grow. He tried to make me feel better saying “that reading lots of other coaches they say the same thing.” We’d love to play our best basketball down the stretch. Knowing that we are playing a lot of teams who are playing for SEC and NCAA Tournament positionings, we are not. That has not been a factor too much yet, but it could be down the stretch.”
On trying to sweep Kentucky for the first time…
“It would mean a lot. I think typically people judge you on how you do in the best competitions against the best teams in your schedule and your rivals. It’s a great opportunity for us. There is a reason why Kentucky is playing well right now. They are playing with confidence. They are shooting it better and that’s the scary part. They are shooting about 36% from three in the league. The last 6 or 7 games they are shooting closer to 40% from three. When you have good post up game like they do and then guys who can take a three-point shot, that’ll obviously present a challenge. Our guys will know the history that’s available to them.”
On how the end of the season is different this year…
“It doesn’t feel normal. It’s not the same. We are working as hard, and I think our kids are training as hard but there is an edge to where you are going to be seeded in the tournament and who you want to get matched up with on your road to the conference tournament championship. Normally we talk about this stuff, if we win or lose here this is what our seeding is nationally, this is the road to the final four. We talk about that a lot. There is a bit of an edge. The greatest example I can give you is halftime at the game at Arkansas. Eric Musselman walked in at halftime and said to his guys “Do you want to make the NCAA Tournament; well, you can’t lose to this team if you do.” That’s just a little bit of an edge. There are no excuses here. We take advantage of the opportunities. We play Kentucky on CBS. CBS put this game on a Saturday. There are a lot of other good SEC games, but they wanted Auburn vs. Kentucky, alright can we take advantage of it.”
On Justin Powell…
“I met with Justin this morning. He’s doing okay, but he misses his team. He misses his coaches. He misses being around every day. He misses the opportunity to finish up on a spectacular start to his freshman campaign. All I can tell you is in leading up to our season, Justin’s teams won. We keep score in everything. It don’t matter if it’s 3-on-3, 4-on-4 or 5-on-5. It don’t matter. His teams won. Why? Because he was a productive player and he’s a great competitor. So the fact that he is not able to be out there with his teammates right now is depressing. He is hanging in there. He is going to recover. But obviously, we wish he would have recovered from his head injury sooner so he could be out there with his teammates.”
On if JT Thor’s recent struggles are in part due to the other team or him not knowing where to fit in…
“I think combination of both and maybe just a little bit of freshman fatigue. He has never worked so hard. He’s always worked hard. He’s never worked so hard in his entire life. You think about his summer – even though there were limitations of what we could and couldn’t do – he trained harder this summer than he’s ever trained in his life. He has never had to play defense and play as hard off the ball or in other aspects as he is now. Being young, being thin and having so much energy – people marvel at my energy. Well, I’ve got plenty of fat, and I can burn plenty of fat, and I’ve got plenty of energy. He don’t have no fat. He don’t eat no meat. He needs to eat some lamb. But, let me tell you something. How about a couple of rebounds and some defensive plays? And two big free throws to beat Kentucky by JT Thor, a just newly-turned 18-year-old kid. I don’t think he’s not getting it. He has been incredibly consistently improving throughout the year. So why in the last three or four, maybe two or three games has that growth stopped? I don’t think it has anything to do with growth. I think it might have something to do with fatigue.”
On Jaylin Williams’ development…
“Offensively, he is fun to have out there on the floor because he can shoot, he can pass, he can handle, he’s got high IQ and is not afraid of the moment. Defensively, he could have greater impact. That’s an area, both his physicality and his ability to guard any position, though he’s capable. When he gets those things, which I hope he’ll get them by next season, he is a real mismatch. He’s a mismatch. He’s got a chance to be a real problem, a mismatch, if he can improve on the defense, rebounding, the physical aspects of the game and guard anybody on the floor, and he’s capable of doing all those things.”
