Bruce Pearl shares how he is keeping Kentucky win in perspective

Auburn’s win over No. 12 ranked Kentucky on Saturday at Auburn Arena was yet another impressive victory by the Tigers, who stretched their winning streak to 15 straight games and improved to 18-1 overall with a perfect 7-0 mark in SEC play.

As Auburn is red-hot and now sitting atop the college basketball world with the No. 1 ranking in the new Associated Press Top 25 poll, all eyes are officially on the Tigers. They’ve played nearly perfect basketball all season long, but they know that they have to keep it up as the season moves along.

While Saturday’s game provided Auburn Arena with a phenomenal atmosphere and was a blast for everyone involved, especially the students that camped outside the arena overnight, Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl was all smiles during his postgame press conference following his team’s win over Kentucky.

“It’s fun,” Pearl said of the atmosphere that was created Saturday. “Jabari [Smith] even said to me, ‘Hey Coach, is this going to get you to smile?’ But my job is to train this team and keep some things in perspective. I am grateful to Auburn. I am grateful to our students. If we had lost the game, I would’ve felt bad for them because they froze their a**** off last night. We did everything we could to feed them and hydrate them, but we couldn’t keep them warm.”

Following its big win over Kentucky, Auburn returns to action Tuesday on the road at Missouri, with tipoff set for 8:30 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.

Pearl explains what changed for Auburn in second half of Kentucky win

Following Auburn’s come-from-behind victory over Kentucky, Tigers’ head coach Bruce Pearl met with the media and was asked what changed for his team in the second half of Saturday’s game.

“Well, we stopped turning the ball over,” Pearl said. “We did a better job of executing, did a better job with our spacing. We weren’t very organized for stretches and we came away with a lot of empty possessions. Give Kentucky credit – they extended, they drove us out of things, they played our strong hands. … It was an excellent defensive game by Kentucky, and it certainly bothered us.

“We made some adjustments, and we anticipated some of that. We obviously did a better job in the second half with the offense in front of my bench.”