Bruce Pearl: "I was off by eight points" on Kentucky being 40 points better

Before Auburn traveled to Kentucky for the teams’ only regular-season meeting this season, Bruce Pearl surprised Auburn’s own fans when he expressed a lack of confidence in what could happen in Lexington on Saturday if his team didn’t compete on the glass. Pearl concluded his press conference after Auburn’s win over Ole Miss by saying, “We rebound like we did tonight — we’ll get beat by 40.”

Well, Auburn didn’t lose by 40 at Kentucky, but the Tigers did get down by that many. The Wildcats matched Pearl’s prediction with over two minutes to go before the final score of 86 to 54, a 32-point loss for Pearl and Auburn.

“I was off by eight points,” he said after the game. “I hate when I’m right.“

Auburn also got smoked on the glass, like Pearl worried, 41 rebounds to 23.

“The physicality, they were much more physical than we were. (They) played that way on both ends of the floor. You know, Tshiebwe is the most physical player in the game. And you know, Toppin is big, strong, bouncy, physical. Their wings are big. Livingston is toughening up a little bit and doesn’t play like a young player. Reeves really helps them. Wallace is–I don’t know many freshmen built like that–a great player, great size, great tempo.

“So, physically, it was a mismatch.”

Auburn was not competitive at all

More on Kentucky from Pearl in defeat. He opened his press conference with his usual admiration of the Bluegrass and a story from his days as the head coach at USI.

“When I was at Southern Indiana coaching the Screaming Eagles for nine years, the two or three teams that mattered the most on our schedule were Kentucky Wesleyan in Owensboro, Northern Kentucky in Covington, and Bellarmine in Louisville,” Pearl told the room in his opening statement. “Because we took great pride in our basketball in Indiana, and y’all take great pride in your basketball in Kentucky. I’ve come in here before and got smacked like that, and it’s embarrassing. Because you know good basketball and you know really bad basketball.

“We were ready to play. You could tell early we had a good game plan and then with about three or four minutes left to go in the first half, things just unraveled a little bit and then our guys just didn’t stay together. You can’t have one assist in the first half, and you’ve got to offensively try to work together offensively to make each other better, and we just didn’t. And of course, the same thing happened on the defensive end as well. So, Auburn was not competitive at all tonight.”