“They get the revenge they wanted, crimson cranes in front of the jungle!” You could hear the sound of nine thousand hearts breaking in unison as Mark Sears threw up a prayer in the Neville Arena. The six-foot-one guard changed ‘Bama’s fortunes at the very last second and handed a crucial loss to Auburn. But where did Bruce Pearl and his team go wrong?

If analysts are to be believed, their game plan itself was quite flawed. On The Field of 68: After Dark, college analyst Mike LaTulip discussed the crippling loss for Auburn. He talked about how the Tigers’ strategy of forcing Alabama inside the arc was flawed, and how it went on to hurt them later on.

“Well, Auburn’s doing their job, they’re forcing tough twos and Alabama has only taken eight threes this game.” He said, before explaining why the Crimson Tide didn’t struggle because of their game plan. “Alabama only took eight threes because they were just straight-line driving and getting in the paint. They didn’t need to take threes.”

So was it Bruce Pearl’s poor plan? No, there’s no doubt that Auburn’s execution worked. They held Alabama to about thirty percent from three and forced them to drive inside the key. But then, what was the issue? Alabama converted most of the chances that they got, scoring a staggering 52 points from inside the painted area!

LaTulip pointed out that Auburn struggled with offensive rebounds, and second-chance plays too. They let players like Grant Nelson crash the boards, which led to plays in transition and a collapse in Auburn’s defense.

“The reason why like for Auburn it’s so tough and why why they got you know beat on the glass against A&M I know A&M beats everybody in the glass but when you can’t contain dribble penetration and then you have Cardwell and you have broom on the back line and those guys want to come over and and try to help recover or try to help go and block the shot or go and contest the shot now you’re leaving Free Runs for for Grant Nelson for Cliff a Murray for these guys to be you know completely uncontested for offensive rebounds and then just it collapses your defense and that’s what happened in the first half,” he further added.

It was a game to forget about the Tigers as they head into the SEC tournament. There are things to improve on, and there are positives to look back at. However, it seemed like Bruce Pearl was livid — both with his team and with the officiating. What exactly happened that made the Auburn coach speak up in the press conference?

Lack of free throws ‘hard to overcome’ for Bruce Pearl and Auburn

Johni Broome is a front-runner for the National Player of the Year award, we all know that. As a six-foot-ten forward, his game from inside the arc has been polished to near perfection! In the matchup against Alabama, he scored a staggering 34 points with only two made free-throws. And according to Bruce Pearl, that’s a big flag for the officiating.

In the post-game press conference, Pearl called out the refereeing. He said that Broome took his first fifteen or so shots from inside the two and did not get a single foul call his way. “He could be the National Player of the Year, and he took 15 or 16 shots from the two and did not shoot a free throw. That is hard to overcome.”

But Pearl emphasized that it wasn’t the officiating’s fault that they lost. “I don’t think we defended well enough. We didn’t rebound well enough.” He went on to talk about how Alabama always shoots more free-throws than Auburn because they are simply better at driving downhill.

Regardless, Auburn has a lot of confidence to recoup. After two consecutive losses, with A&M also getting the best of the Tigers, they have a lot to work on. They have a lot of expectations on their shoulders ahead of the postseason, and it will be interesting to see where they stand when all is said and done.