uat Postgame W[82-77]

[au302 2,669]

So what does everyone think of Ms. State. I got a bad feeling that we're gonna come out jacking up threes since we shot it well tonight. ?

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

49 minutes ago, auburntiger1987 said:

We are very close to nit. We have everything ahead of us right now. We are growing and are far and awat better than the last several years. Even having a glimmer of hope of post season play is soooo nice

If we finish 8-10 in the SEC, it'll depend on who the wins are. If we don't beat Florida, Arkansas, or Georgia, I'm not sure an 8-10 conference record will be good enough to get us into the NIT.

Last year Alabama made the NIT with an 8-10 SEC record but they beat 4 ranked teams on their schedule, which included 3 NCAA tournament teams: #20 Wichita State, #17 Notre Dame, and #15 Texas A&M).. Their quality SEC wins were over: #19 South Carolina, #15 Texas A&M, at Florida, and at LSU.

Also last year, Ole Miss had a 10-8 SEC record but didn't make the NIT. But if you go back and look at Ole Miss's wins, Vanderbilt was the only team they beat that made the NCAA Tournament and Vandy only got into the NCAA Tournament in the First 4, so they barely made it in. 

Right now our only quality wins are over Texas Tech, and TCU and the two wins over Alabama are our only quality SEC wins. We need a couple more quality SEC wins imo to have a good chance of even getting into the NIT. 

[auburntiger1987 759]

Im not saying we are a lock for post season. But we have more than 1 out 2 decent wins. Oklahoma and uconn even if they aren't top 10 tans are big wins away from auburn just by name recognition alone especially playing away from au arena. I'll take the sweep over bama being our best sec wins too. Sec sucks this year and we have uf and ark left in front of us to be able to make a statement.  Same with the miss schools. Obviously we need to make sure we don't drop below .500 buy we have the the talent to bang and play with anyone in conference. Just need to play to our ability.  Argue with me if you want.or say if and buts, but we start out not playing stupid against a few tans esp tenn and this is a different conversion wondering how they keep us out instead of how  do we get in

[AUBwins 10,075]

Bruce Pearl said tonight after the game that beating Bama tonight put us 2 games over .500 on the road.  That could give a little boost if on the bubble with another team.  Sweeping Bama is special and we were real close to blowing them out like the previous game.  

[auburntiger1987 759]

14 minutes ago, AUBwins said:

Bruce Pearl said tonight after the game that beating Bama tonight put us 2 games over .500 on the road.  That could give a little boost if on the bubble with another team.  Sweeping Bama is special and we were real close to blowing them out like the previous game.  

The biggest thing giving me heartburn is b.c. that's inexcusable.  Uab will be to 3 in conf, save with Purdue. Need to see ok and uconn win a few more. And if we play as well as we can,  we should take the miss games, uga, lsu and def mizzou. If we can take 1 of the uf and ark? Hello dance.  Obv a lot to ask of this team,  but it's just as likely as losing more than our fair share.  Need wiley to have more points and rebounds than fouls and some more big games from dp and bb.

[milehighfan 1,240]

I know they said we are 4-2 on the road. I know Mizzou and the turds are two. Who are the other two?

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

1 minute ago, milehighfan said:

I know they said we are 4-2 on the road. I know Mizzou and the turds are two. Who are the other two?

TCU and Connecticut

[all4AU 379]

We also won at UAB. 

[milehighfan 1,240]

1 minute ago, Auburnfan91 said:

TCU and Connecticut

But we also beat Oklahoma on the road as well.

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

18 minutes ago, auburntiger1987 said:

Im not saying we are a lock for post season. But we have more than 1 out 2 decent wins. Oklahoma and uconn even if they aren't top 10 tans are big wins away from auburn just by name recognition alone especially playing away from au arena. I'll take the sweep over bama being our best sec wins too. Sec sucks this year and we have uf and ark left in front of us to be able to make a statement.  Same with the miss schools. Obviously we need to make sure we don't drop below .500 buy we have the the talent to bang and play with anyone in conference. Just need to play to our ability.  Argue with me if you want.or say if and buts, but we start out not playing stupid against a few tans esp tenn and this is a different conversion wondering how they keep us out instead of how  do we get in

We still have a bad Boston College loss on our resume. The selection committee's not going to just gloss over that. Oklahoma is awful this year. Connecticut still has a losing record. Name recognition or not, neither of those teams are going to help our resume this year. Both Oklahoma and Connecticut's RPI's are in the 100's. 

I'm not arguing about talent or competing in the SEC, I'm strictly judging wins and losses which is what the committee will be looking at. It's not just how many wins you have but who you beat which is why quality wins matter. I just showed you that Ole Miss had a 10-8 SEC record last year but didn't go to the NIT. South Carolina went 11-7 in the SEC but didn't make the NCAA Tournament. Quality wins matter when it come to being selected to play in a tournament. That's why, especially for the SEC, having quality wins are more important than just the record. The strength of the conference is not going to be strong enough when the committee looks at the SEC conference records. 

Since Calipari's been at Kentucky, the SEC conference as a whole has been watered down and has not been getting more than 3-4 teams on a regular basis into the NCAA Tournament . Before Calipari came to Kentucky, the SEC used to consistently get 5-6 teams into the NCAA Tournament. 

[auburntiger1987 759]

Not arguing that bc loss at all nor that snake cal being a cancer.  Hope he rots. But there's a reason every year the joe linardi types do a blind resume comparison.  Rpi and s.o.s are great indicators, but big name schools,  wither great wins or not, have a wow factor.  Im not saying they be as meaningful as say last year when ok was a top 25 team,  or the mid 2000's where uconn was king,  but they're still big programs in big conferences.  Again not saying were a lock for anything, but those wins help not hurt.  Winning solves all our problems and i think we can agree on that

[all4AU 379]

23 minutes ago, milehighfan said:

But we also beat Oklahoma on the road as well.

That was on a neutral court in Connecticut. It doesn't count as a true road game (neither do the Texas Tech or Purdue games we played in Cancun). 

[AU64 10,122]

Best shooting game since Coastal Carolina. ...which likely made all the difference. Johnson and McLemore were huge surprises to me......played valuable minutes and RJ ended up with the most points for AU.

Bama beat us every way they could ..owned the boards with about 20 more rebounds, forced us into a huge number of turnovers..some were almost fatal at the end....and  took a dozen more shots overall and of course, Wiley only got 15 minutes because of foul trouble and was  not a factor on the boards.  

DP looked the best he has for a while now, especially on offense. There was a mention early in another post about him changing positions for the night because Spencer was out....I could not tell what happened there but he definitely was more into the offense.   

SO....was this a turnaround game for AU...or just a great win that signifies nothing about the next game?  

[FoundationEagle 637]

12 minutes ago, AU64 said:

SO....was this a turnaround game for AU...or just a great win that signifies nothing about the next game?  

Until this team shows they can win a meaningful game and not turn around and lose by 20 the next game with poor effort and sloppy play, I'm going with signifies nothing.  If we go off of previous games, it signifies a blowout loss coming next. Maybe if the coaches can actually convince them they still have to try to win the next game instead of becoming lazy prima donnas because they won a game then this could be the turning point. I sure hope so. I know we are all tired of seeing this teams potential one game just to see them throw in the towel 10 minutes in to the next game.  

So I guess the simple answer to your question is: depends  

[WDEKC 187]

I wouldn't compare our resume to Ole Miss last year at all. They had a terrible OOC SOS and overall SOS in the 150 range. Ours is top 100 and our RPI is currently at 70 compared to Ole Miss finishing at 100. They didn't have a single top 50 win as we currently do. They went 3-10 against top 100 teams and we already have 5 top 100 wins.

[CameronCrazy 1,059]

Very impressive win! WAR EAGLE!!

[WarTiger 3,901]

9 hours ago, milehighfan said:

But we also beat Oklahoma on the road as well.

Oklahoma was away from Auburn but it wasn't a true road game. it was played at a neutral site. 

[auburn4ever 1,266]

A series sweep over the low tide. Gotta love it! WAR EAGLE!

[Sully to Beasley 643]

We beat their butts twice in the last couple of weeks. That is all that matters to me! WDE! 

                                          

[JwgreDeux 1,279]

Our RPI is 63, our non-con RPI is 32, we have every reason to believe we can win each of our remaining games (and lose each of our remaining games). We are legit in range of any postseason tourney if we can string together a few wins. 

 

Going to to be a fun end to the year. This is heading towards the program I expected under CBP. 

[gr82b4au 5,568]

A sweep against uat is always nice. 

This team is still doing the things that can get them beat, but if they shoot it well from the 3 they will be in every game. Live by the 3 die by the 3. 

[au302 2,669]

I'm not saying to not focus on the big picture, but I wanna warn you guys from getting too excited over this. Yes, it was a good win and yes we played well, but when I got too excited after we beat TCU last weekend we laid an egg vs Tennessee.  Also, I'm worried about State. I don't think we're gonna shoot nearly as well from three so I hope BP makes it clear that we need to be careful in that area. Would be nice to see Dunans and Wiley come back to life a little bit.

[NoALtiger 3,860]

It will help getting Spencer back as well, we were outmanned in the rebounding dept anyways but missing him yesterday made it worse. Excellent win to be sure and these guys most certainly can string together a few more W's before it's over. 

Do. Not.Underestimate. Bruce. 

[au302 2,669]

10 minutes ago, NoALtiger said:

It will help getting Spencer back as well, we were outmanned in the rebounding dept anyways but missing him yesterday made it worse. Excellent win to be sure and these guys most certainly can string together a few more W's before it's over. 

Do. Not.Underestimate. Bruce. 

 

I think we missed Spencer more than I thought we would. His energy and effort are huge. I thought Laron Smith could hold down the fort but he was a non-factor at best when he was in. Not his fault because he simply doesn't have the talent for the SEC.

[CameronCrazy 1,059]

Austin Wiley being in foul trouble all game really hurt us in the paint and on the boards. We certainly won't be able to shoot the 3 that effectively every game, but it was GREAT to see Purifoy, Bryce Brown, and Lang get their stroke back.

Like Bruce said on SEC Network, he doesn't know what team he's going to get on any given night. We have several guys that can score in double digits in any game, but we have to have consistency from at least 3-4 players every night. With Purifoy's confidence back, we need Purifoy, Harper, Heron, and Wiley to give us solid production every game.

If we can get that, then I love the potential of what Dunans, Johnson, Brown, & McLemore can give us off the bench. At this point, I'm not expecting anything more than role players from Spencer, Lang, and Smith. 

But the bottom line is this... this team will only goes as far as our defense and rebounding will take us. If we can make strides in those two areas the next few weeks then we really have a shot to make a run! WAR EAGLE!!