Auburn Tigers basketball head coach Bruce Pearl is seemingly still not over his team’s loss in last season’s NCAA Tournament. And he made it pretty clear that he`s got the defeat hovering over him ever since their exit from the Big Dance.
Pearl mentioned how his team’s struggles during their game against underdog Yale was a case of bad defensive decisions, which ultimately led to their downfall (via 247Sports):
“We can’t foul Yale 25 times and expect to win an NCAA Tournament game,” Pearl said. “By the way, I’m still stuck on that in case you haven’t noticed. I’ll be stuck on it all year long. We’ll be talking about Yale all fall. We’ve got to own it.”
The head coach then continued on about his team’s much-needed, imminent improvement on the defensive end:
“Defensively, we could be really, really good next year,” Pearl said Monday at his annual Fore the Children golf fundraiser. “Older and tough and physical. We’ve just got to do a better job of guarding without fouling.”
Bruce Pearl and Auburn had the dubious distinction of being among the few higher-seed teams to get bounced out of the Tournament in the first round. They joined the likes of Kentucky, BYU, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas Tech, South Carolina, and St. Mary’s as the only teams to lose to double-digit-seeded squads in the round of 64.
How did Bruce Pearl and the Auburn Tigers lose to Yale?
The 4-seeded Tigers were among the favorites to make a deep NCAA Tournament run last season, and mostly with good reason. They went 27-8 on the year and were actually leading at the half of their game against the Bulldogs.
Johni Broome, who was a clear standout for them all year long, eventually finished the game with a stellar 24-point, 13-rebound, and 4-assist stat line, but it was not enough.
As Bruce Pearl said, the Tigers just fouled way too much and led to a considerable 31-22 free throw attempt disparity between them and the Bulldogs. The teams shot almost as well as each other from the line, but those nine extra attempts massively helped Yale close the gap in the second half after being down by the break.
Auburn led almost all the way in a handful of statistical categories for much of the game. But then again, it`s the foul trouble situation that spelled their doom. Breaks of the game simply sealed their fate by the end.
