REACTION: Auburn Basketball vs LSU Tigers Postgame

0:00The Auburn Tigers had to win this one and thank goodness they did. You are locked on Auburn, your daily podcast on the Auburn Tigers, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Yes, welcome on into Lockdown Auburn, your daily Auburn Tigers podcast on your host, Zach Blackerby. And thank you so much for making Lockdown Auburn, your first lesson every single day. Darrell Dappert's joining us live from Neville Arena of the Montgomery Radio Legend himself. Auburn wins 88 to 74 against an LSU team. You can tell they wanted this one, but obviously Auburn took it to them. The hot pedifer, one of his best scoring nights down this stretch where Auburn has kind of struggled. Auburn still kind of wishy washy on defense, but to me it's the hot pedifer and then Kevin

1:02Overton kind of caught fire there in the second half, Darrell. My bad, Darrell, you're muted and go. Sorry. Here we go. I think there are a lot of positives you could take away from this. Obviously, you needed to get the win. You're supposed to get the win of an LSU. I'm not going to sure go to there because I'm not a good basketball team. How they beat Ole Miss. I don't know, but they're not a very good basketball team. They did shoot the ball really well in the first half though. I mean, at some point with about six, seven minutes left to go, at the half they were at 70 percent and then Auburn closed that gap a little bit and LSU came out the second half and the only reason why that game stayed around 10 or 11 as long as it did is because LSU started hitting a bunch of threes. But I think Auburn did some things defensively pretty good perimeter wise and from an offensive standpoint, Zach, I think the biggest thing that I saw was the extra pass. Very unselfish tonight. Auburn really was looking for that extra pass to find that open man.

2:07And then big game to hide showed up tonight, which was huge. Which was huge. So I mean, I think we got to talk about this more in the macro before we kind of zoom in on individual performances because this game was about, okay, when this, if you want to continue to have a chance to find yourself in the NCAA tournament, you have done yourself no favors over the last two or three weeks, no favors at all you had to win tonight. It kind of felt like if you lost tonight, it was over. Sure, there's a few fluky things that could happen, you know, when the SEC tournament went several games next week. Sure. That was on the table. Man, you really put yourself in a close to impossible situation if you were to lose tonight. It didn't happen. Auburn came out, one looked as good as they had had a hot minute. I guess the question is like, is this just, oh, it was against LSU, a team that's not very good. Or could there be something here, Darrell, where you're starting to see this team want

3:10to play together and do what it takes to win basketball games? A little both. I think two things can be true at once. I think this was a game that they gained a little bit of confidence because let's not forget. They played some teams that weren't very good, previous to this and missed to be stayed Oklahoma and Ole Miss and didn't find this, this, this, this level of play. So that's something to be gained from that. I think LSU is just, Auburn is a really, really bad matchup for LSU, you know, certain teams just, you know, you'll line up against him. I was very surprised that I mentioned this at halftime on the bar cast that with the way Auburn has been defending the three, LSU only took five, three pointers in the first half. Whoever had their scout, it's a head scratcher. I mean, you know what I'm saying, and then in the second half, I was like, oh, I shouldn't

4:11have said that. Shut up, Daryl, because now they've hit the first four, threes in the second half, but why? They insisted on trying to go inside on Auburn and honestly, Zach, that led to 11 first half turnovers. They were forcing passes. Stop me if you've heard this before. They were forcing passes. They were taking the extra dribble. They were putting the ball on the floor in traffic. Looks very similar to what Auburn had been doing during his losing streak. So LSU, very curious strategy with the offensive game plan, and by the time the second half rolled around Auburn and exactly what we said they needed to do at halftime, they came out and extended to leave. They did. That was the difference. They did, and that's something that this team has not been able to do consistently this year. Yeah, LSU shot 46% from three. Thankfully, they only shot 15, thankfully. That's amazing because you know, most teams have been shooting 20 to 25 against Auburn and think about if you shoot 45 to 50% shooting 20, you know, that's significant.

5:18And Auburn was having a little bit trouble with their big man on the block and some early on, some post, and maybe that's why LSU kept going to that and didn't try to shoot threes because they thought they were getting what they wanted. I think LSU overall was just under 50% from the field, Zach, you have that. I was wondering what their total field goal percentage was. 54%. Yeah, that's good. I mean, that's smoking. Now, people would say, how do you get beat 15 or 14 or whatever and shoot the ball that well? Well, Auburn did a really good job of closing the rebound gap to the second half at one point. They were getting out rebound. And then the turnovers. Turnovers equal extra possessions. And when you get extra possessions, your shooting percentage doesn't have to be as good as the other team because you're getting more shots. Auburn took 13 more shots in LSU tonight. I mean, there you go. I mean, just hit, even at a at a lukewarm percentage, just hit four of those 13 and that's an eight point plus margin because of turnovers. Right. Right. You know, that's, I don't know what Auburn had points off turnovers, but it was, it was

6:22outrageous. I mean, they really, in my opinion, that's where the, that in free throws is where the ball game is more. Points off turnovers is pretty close, Darryl, Auburn 13 LSU had 11, also only at two points. Wow. That's surprising. Surprising. Both teams had the same amount of rebounds. Auburn had six more second chance points. That's probably the most lopsided. Only four bench points for Auburn tonight, which is lower than normal. I feel like same amount of points in the paint. I mean, this was a closer game, I think, statistically than what the final is. But Auburn getting those extra shots off, that's, that's, that was, that was a difference. And your bench points need to come, obviously, from sway and Yovic, and they didn't. Now, Yovic played really, really hard. And at one point during the game, in the first half, I did feel like this game was going to go a different direction than others have by something I, I saw on the court from an eyeball test. Yovic tried to make a steal, made a great hustle play and almost dove out of bounds.

7:24Every Auburn player went over to him, dapped him up, graduated him, then the crowd got into it because of that. You could just sense they were playing with more urgency and energy and enthusiasm they had in the past. And that play kind of typified that. How was the crowd tonight? It sounded decent on TV. Well, you know, it was, it was electric when it had to be. It was loud when it had to be. It did get into the game and it stayed into the game. Obviously, it wasn't as, you know, the capacity wasn't there. But the ones that were here were pretty loud, pretty vocal. And I got to give the student section a lot of credit tonight. They, you know, I went down there, I always loved to have the opportunity to kind of visit with some of the jungle before the game when I'm taking video and they seemed like they were ready to get after it. And they did a good job. They were very loud, they were very enthusiastic, they were, they were cheering when they were supposed to cheer. The gooey fries helped. So, you know, all that, the gooey fries helped.

8:24Yeah, that's right. That's right. Okay. What does this mean as far as this weekend and what do we need to see from this Auburn team if they want to make the tournament? That's next, right here, unlocked on Auburn. Today's show brought to you by our friends at Robinhood. What a sports were traded like markets. Now you can put your sports IQ to work in real time with Robinhood prediction markets. It's not you against the house. It's you participating in a live market. You can buy or sell your positions live all game long, use your sports knowledge in the moments that matter. Robinhood prediction markets changes the game. It's people moving the action. So in momentum shifts, you can move with it. You're no longer just a spectator, play by play you decide. Great. Every play with Robinhood now available across the U.S., download the Robinhood app now to begin. We also brought to you by our friends at Indeed. Indeed is the best place to find quality candidates for your next open position.

9:31Sarah, you guys use Indeed to find talent for your company. Absolutely. Have used them for a very long time. They do a lot of the hard work for us. I love the, I mean, I got to listen, it's so effective that I got to do a lot of filtering and I got to go through a lot, they give you a lot of volume and quantity to choose from. And I really like that. But you can obviously set things to make it exactly what you want. Listers of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the status that it deserves at Indie.com slash podcast, Indie.com slash podcast need to hire. That's a job for indeed sponsored jobs. All right. The Auburn Tigers take down the LSU Tigers 88 to 74, a win that was desperately needed. And the Auburn Tigers get it done. Let's turn our focus to Saturday. Darryl is an important one. We saw Alabama lose to Georgia tonight.

10:32Does that have any impact on what happens this Saturday? I mean, you can make the argument of like, you know, who's playing for more or whatever. It doesn't matter. You hope you hope both teams want this one desperately. And I mean, I think Auburn would have to play their best one of their best games of the season. That's the best game of the past in outings. I mean, it's probably hard to pull this off, but they're capable of doing it. You've got to play together as a team and not doing silly things like turn over. Yeah, both teams will have a lot to play for. I think Auburn has more to play for than Alabama does. I think Alabama's pretty much locked into their seed line now with them beating Georgia, beating an Auburn team that's in the bottom half of the SEC at home is not going to change your seed line. If you're Alabama, so Auburn has more to play for.

11:32They win. They get in the tournament. If they don't, I think they have to win. Maybe one or two in the SEC tournament, even though we said typically the SEC tournament is not an indicator of changing things. I think it doesn't change seed lines, but it possibly can. If the tournament selection committee is looking for a reason to get you in. And if Auburn has, you know, right now five really good wins on the resume. If you beat Alabama, that's six. I think you're in. So I don't know. It's an interesting argument about that Georgia game. Because Alabama, I'm an odds guy. Like sooner or later, the odds are going to stop you in the longer you win. The greater the odds that you're going to get beat. And Alabama hadn't got beat since January. And, you know, they kind of got it out of the way with Georgia, but nothing's, there's nothing to say they can't lose to in a row. And they have not been as impressive at home as some of these top 15 top 20 teams have in the country.

12:33Yeah, so we'll see what happens. I mean, obviously you need so many different guys to step up. We need big game to hot to be there. We need key Sean Hall to be one of those guys. I mean, if Kevin over 10 goes six of 10 for 21, I like our chances a lot more. You're going to need some of these pieces to emerge like you saw happen tonight. Can they do it on the road? Can they not look shell shocked on the road and get off to a to a fast start in both halves? To me, I think it's what's going to come down to. You can go on the road and win. Auburn did it last year in Coleman, albeit with a final 14, but I want to remind people that two of the worst Auburn teams I've seen in the last 10 years had Bama on the ropes in Coleman. The brand in Miller year that were Auburn barely got into the tournament. Auburn had them beat and went into overtime. And then the year that Auburn put himself on probation or whatever, made himself in L's, they played, you know, and they, and Alabama won the regular season

13:38and conference tournament. Auburn played them tough in Coleman. So they've typically played well there. Sure. I don't think they'll go in there and be intimidated. And again, you know, they've lost, Alabama's lost a Tennessee and I think they lost a Vanderbilt and somebody else at home this year. So we'll see. This is, this is one of those that's obvious that Auburn has everything to play. I mean, they can still get into the tournament, but you can actually absolutely, all you ever want when you play sports is to control your own destiny. That's all you can ask for. You don't want to have to help from somebody else. You don't want to look at all these teams that are on the bubble, the bubble, the bracket busters and all that. You don't want to worry about that because it's going to happen. Somebody's going to win a conference tournament that, you know, it's going to take in that large away, but you can take care of business if you win Saturday. You don't have to worry about all that. Right. So we normally do, you know, five remaining or whatever. So I guess we just have one game left. So chat, let us know what you think Auburn's record will be for the remainder of the season.

14:41So either one of know or oh and one, I have a hard time picking Auburn on Saturday. Darryl, gosh, I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong, but I have a hard time picking them. Yes, and that's the frustrating part is because if Auburn would have played last Saturday, offensively, like they did tonight, you know, they beat Ole Miss. There's no doubt they would have won that game. Sure, yeah. So that you wouldn't even have to, you know, I think, I think the hay would be in the barn. So I have a hard time, you know, picking Auburn too, but I just, I'm going to. I have a feeling. I just, I have a feeling that something's going to happen weird, like it always does in this rivalry. And the other team has won. It's the other team's arena. Auburn has more to play for, should be more desperate and someone to predict the upset. That would be incredible, that would be incredible. And Auburn either way will be in a spot to win a few next week in the SEC tournament with their seating as well.

15:41Some binkers crossed, the Auburn Tigers pull it out. Darryl, how do people check out everything you've got going on? You can follow me here Wednesdays and Fridays with you. We've got a show dropping tomorrow that we're pretty excited about. Locked on Auburn, where you get your podcasts on YouTube and then live. We're going to go live a few more times this year. So after basketball games, yep, please like the video, please subscribe if you're tuned to the audio, please subscribe and leave us a review, helps us show out a ton. We'll see you next time. This has been locked on Auburn.