Men vs Kentucky Postgame

[CameronCrazy 1,058]

The free throw shooting, lack of defense, lack of rebounding, and excess fouls were brutal to watch, but Austin Wiley's limited presence was a huge plus to me today. 

The ridiculous 5th foul call by the refs against Wiley really costed us during this game. I thought Wiley was able to match up well with Adebayo when he was in there. Wiley was 3-4 from the field with 6 points and 3 rebounds. That's pretty much been his box score all year. Today proved to me that we need to feed the big man more. We need to run the offense more through Wiley and work from inside out. I think we'll have more open looks from three if we do that. 

Dunans had a career day and was able to take advantage of some one-on-one mismatches. But we tried to force that type of offense too much, especially in the last few minutes. 

 

[AuburnNTexas 7,134]

The defense wasn't that bad the Kentucky offense was that good. Free throw shooting was bad but this team played hard and kept the game close.  I actually thought the team played one of its better games today. The number of quality great players that Kentucky has eventually wore us down but we played them tough.

[tombigbeetiger 223]

9 minutes ago, AuburnNTexas said:

The defense wasn't that bad the Kentucky offense was that good. Free throw shooting was bad but this team played hard and kept the game close.  I actually thought the team played one of its better games today. The number of quality great players that Kentucky has eventually wore us down but we played them tough.

i hate moral victories claimed by the unicorn riding, sunshine and rainbow fans, but i'll claim one today....stood toe to toe with them for most of the game......

[Charhair 345]

No one in the world expected our defense to look good in the transitional role against Kentucky. I'm guessing that there's a very slim chance we see any team get close to being able to run with them until tournament time and even then it may not be done. 

That being said, go back and look at some of Kentucky's wins and you'll feel much better about this one. Beat (now #13) Michigan state by 21, nearly doubled Tamu and Arizona states scores, 26 over Arkansas, 23 over ole miss. Sure, we also lost by 20 but i think many of us were expecting it could have been much worse. 

[au302 2,669]

I've always thought that we could beat the middle and bottom sec teams but today has me thinking we have a shot vs teams like South Carolina, Arkansas, A&M, and maybe florida

[tombigbeetiger 223]

9 minutes ago, Charhair said:

No one in the world expected our defense to look good in the transitional role against Kentucky. I'm guessing that there's a very slim chance we see any team get close to being able to run with them until tournament time and even then it may not be done. 

That being said, go back and look at some of Kentucky's wins and you'll feel much better about this one. Beat (now #13) Michigan state by 21, nearly doubled Tamu and Arizona states scores, 26 over Arkansas, 23 over ole miss. Sure, we also lost by 20 but i think many of us were expecting it could have been much worse. 

they were not intimidated at all going into rupp.......played much better as a team, though the defense has to improve, but i am going  to guess that it will be next year before we see the defense close to where it needs to be...not a bad loss at all

[Charhair 345]

29 minutes ago, tombigbeetiger said:

they were not intimidated at all going into rupp.......played much better as a team, though the defense has to improve, but i am going  to guess that it will be next year before we see the defense close to where it needs to be...not a bad loss at all

The team definitely shows a lot of promise. CBP did an amazing job tonight too (coach cal was quoted saying he did "a hell of a job keeping his team in this game"). I know a few of us, including myself, have bickered about his lack of time outs this season but I thought he used them perfectly tonight as well as the lineup and substitutions all being very effective. The first time he pulled Johnson and Dunnans out of the game calmed both of them down a lot and they both ended up playing well for a majority of the game, especially TJ. 

 Harper, Johnson, TJ and everyone else that guarded Fox did way better than expected. We seemed to be more intact than I thought we would offensively without DP at Rupp. Of course TJ covered most of the gap but we were taking good shots, working the ball inside better. FT shooting wasn't good but we don't usually get many FT and our better FT shooters (I would guess our most reliable are Harper and DP) were not the ones shooting most of them tonight so that wasn't too hard to see coming. 

I think we played better than how much we lost by but even with the 20 point loss on the scoreboard, this is the best I've felt after coming away with a loss all season.

[NoALtiger 3,849]

1-4 now in league play...but at least this one was expected. Just gotta chalk this one to the fact that it's UK and this is what they do to teams, and we gotta move on. 

[augolf1716 21,101]

I think AU is something like 2 and 46 playing at UK could be wrong...

[tigerbrotha12 2,362]

Tough crowd- you guys really think Auburn played badly on defense? Kentucky is averaging something like 90 points a game. (They dropped 103 on North Carolina. They're an offensive powerhouse. 

Look at our progression. 2 years ago, this game is over in the first half. Today? Guys we had a 4 point game with 7 minutes left to play, and a 5 point game with about 6 before UK started to pull away late. That means until wiley got the 5th foul called on him, we played almost even with Kentucky on their home court for 33-34 minutes. Be encouraged about where the program is going. My gosh, we lose a game on the road to the number six team in the country and the first thing you guys think to do is say "we're bad at free throws, bad at defense, bad at rebounding....." Kentucky is very talented in all of these areas. Sometimes, the other team really is that good. 

[augolf1716 21,101]

What's weird is UK shot FT almost as bad as we did

[au302 2,669]

I liked how we didn't start jacking up threes and actually ran a disciplined offense. CBP did an amazing job today. His substitutions were on point. The only thing I found odd is that I noticed he was playing Laron a little more than Spencer early on. Not complaining just thought it was odd

[Charhair 345]

6 minutes ago, au302 said:

I liked how we didn't start jacking up threes and actually ran a disciplined offense. CBP did an amazing job today. His substitutions were on point. The only thing I found odd is that I noticed he was playing Laron a little more than Spencer early on. Not complaining just thought it was odd

I like Laron over Spencer sometimes. Not a knock on Spencer at all but I feel Laron is more reliable in the sense that you know what he's going to do while he's out there. He's a solid defender, can block shots, rebounds, is usually in the right position, he's gonna play help D when he can and while he's not much of an offensive presence, he always seems to be the first person to open up for a two man game to free up a ball handler being pressed when he's in. He's got a lot of non stat sheet attributes and a consistency about him that would gain minutes from me if I were coach. Spencer on the other hand can be more of a wild card. He'll call for the ball and try to generate his own shot (successful a lot of the time), great at blocking shots (probably picks up more fouls per minute than Laron, id imagine) but is also younger than Laron, who is one of the few players that provides all of this team's seniority and most of its experience.

either way, seems coach Pearl does indeed know what he's doing when it comes to these big men.

[au302 2,669]

I agree. With Laron, we know what we're getting. I like Spencer because I think he's really improved offensively since the time he's been here. He also provides those exciting plays such as that awesome put back dunk he had today. But I agree that with Laron we know what we're getting. Either way, they both played well imo and Bruce did a great job 

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

4 hours ago, au302 said:

I've always thought that we could beat the middle and bottom sec teams but today has me thinking we have a shot vs teams like South Carolina, Arkansas, A&M, and maybe florida

Texas A&M isn't very good this year. They're 1-4 in the SEC like we are. We should beat them.

Our next two games are LSU and Alabama and they're both at home. Very winnable games. If we split those two and go 1-1 two then I'll be disappointed. Those two games are must wins if we want to be able to go to a post season tournament. 

[Charhair 345]

Winning these next two games would be big for this team especially being two home games before a couple of big road games. Hopefully Purifoy comes back quick

[AUTigersfan89 256]

I think the team grew up a lot yesterday. They played with poise, and even had Kentucky on their heels with less than 10 to play in Rupp. They didn't seem intimidated at all.

The substitutions were handled much better, and I'm hoping this sets the precedent on what our rotations should be going forward. I hate to imagine what the game would've been without Austin Wiley. I think having the big man helped substantially with us going against their size, and I would like to see us run more offense through him.

Seeing Fox get frustrated by fouling out was funny, and overall I thought that game was much better officiated than any other of our SEC games. I'm wondering if we're consistently getting bottom tier officiating crews, and teams like Florida and Kentucky get the better ones (kind of like how Ritter does the big SEC games).

[auburntiger1987 759]

This team is getting better.  I think a lot has to do with being young and learning to communicate better.  Still had too many open shots that were hit.  We weathered the storm and im damn proud of sticking together and working their gameplan. Our bigs need to work on positioning more but that will come especially with wiley being so young.  I also liked trying to take some of those charges but don't slide into them to get better positioning that made the ref have to call it a block.  Overall, against most teams on our schedule, that effort and game plan would have led to a W. 

[au302 2,669]

I'm going to watch the replay but on first glance I really thought Wiley outplayed Bam. Obviously, Bam ended up having a good game but in the limited minutes he was in I thought Wiley handled him really well. Is Wiley going to be better than Bam or does he just have more size?

[Charhair 345]

2 hours ago, au302 said:

I'm going to watch the replay but on first glance I really thought Wiley outplayed Bam. Obviously, Bam ended up having a good game but in the limited minutes he was in I thought Wiley handled him really well. Is Wiley going to be better than Bam or does he just have more size?

Hard to tell with Wiley at this point, imo. As there aren't many that have made the same transition as him to compare him to. I think with how quick his transition from high school to college was and with how well he's already adapting to a new team that he is likely a pretty good learner and very talented. With the experience he'll have already gotten from playing in 2/3ish of this season and this up coming off season, I imagine we'll a much more dominant Wiley at the beginning of next season.