Alabama Basketball: Auburn fans crushed to lose their ‘Super Bowl’

As Auburn showed for 39 minutes against Alabama Basketball on Saturday, the Tigers are a tough team. Bruce Pearl’s teams always play tough defense. Pearl had a game plan against the Crimson Tide to limit Alabama’s three-point attempts and especially those by Brandon Miller.

The plan was sound and held the Crimson Tide to six made threes, little more than half of the Tide’s per-game average. Nate Oats and his players did not panic. If Auburn was going to contest outside the arc, it gave the Tide more room to penetrate the paint. Alabama took full advantage, scoring 44 paint points to 20 for Auburn.

Bruce Pearl gambled that if the Tide could not rain threes, it could not beat the Tigers. It was not a foolish gamble, but it was a wrong one.

Auburn fans fumed over the game’s result for two main reasons. Since Auburn’s trip to the 2019 NCAA Tournament Final Four, Auburn fans have thought their program has become a college basketball Blue Blood. It is not.

It is a solid program, under a good coach, that since the Final Four appearance has won only one NCAA Tournament game. The Tigers did win the 2021-22 SEC Regular Season Championship and earned a 2-seed in that season’s Big Dance. Also in the last 11 games between the rivals, Auburn leads 6-5, boosted by winning both contests in the 2022 season. The mistaken conclusion made by Auburn fans is the Tigers’ resume of recent seasons means it dominates Alabama. The only word for that is delusion.

Alabama Basketball is not a college basketball Blue Blood either, but Nate Oats has the Tide moving in that direction more than Pearl does the Tigers.

The other wild misperception held by many Auburn fans is that Bruce Pearl is one of college basketball’s great coaches. Pearl is a good coach and in some games, perhaps a great one. But Pearl was not the best coach in Neville Arena on Saturday. Nate Oats was. Auburn fans cannot cope with the fact that Oats outcoached Pearl.

After Saturday’s game, Nate Oats commented on Auburn’s strategy.

"(Auburn) did a good job of taking away what we were trying to do."

Alabama Basketball Adjustment

What Oats did was to give Alabama direction to counter Auburn’s defensive plan. The Crimson Tide did not abandon shooting threes, but it took what Auburn most often gave it, which was to attack the basket.

The adjustment by Oats is why the Crimson Tide won by eight, in one of the SEC’s toughest environments, despite its best player being 0/7 from outside the arc. Hats off to Coach Nate Oats.

Oats also commented it was “nice” winning Auburn’s Super Bowl.