On Tuesday, the No.1 ranked Auburn Tigers Men's basketball team hosted the No. 15 ranked Mississippi State Bulldogs in their fourth game of SEC play. The Tigers were heavy favorites, but were expected to have a good matchup with the Bulldogs. Ultimately, the Tigers, without Preseason All-American Johni Broome, defeated the Bulldogs in a whopping 22-point win.
The Tigers started the game on fire with a 10-0 run from Chad Baker-Mazara, which led to a Bulldog timeout only two minutes into the game. After that timeout, Mississippi State fought back into the game, leading to the Tiger's second-smallest lead at 20-17. Auburn followed up with a 13-1 run and pulled away. Chad Baker-Mazara and Chaney Johnson had the biggest impact in the first half.
Baker-Mazara led the team in the first half with 18 points off 86% shooting and 75% from beyond the arc. He started the game on fire and closed out the half with a three-pointer with two seconds remaining. Johnson was right behind him with 13 points that came from all over the floor. Johnson also protected the paint well with four blocks. The duo controlled the pace of the half for the Tigers and scored 61% of Auburn's total first-half points.
In the second half, the Bulldogs put up more of a fight, but they dug too deep of a hole for themselves in the first, and the Tigers proved themselves to be too much to handle. Different from the large 46-27 gap at the end of the first half, the Bulldogs fought harder and made it a 42-39 difference in the second.
Shooting percentages took a dip for the Tigers and rose for the Bulldogs, but what really helped Mississippi State was fouling. Auburn had 13 fouls while Mississippi State had 11, yet the Bulldogs shot twice as many free throws as Auburn. However, to give Auburn the edge in this half, we saw more production from multiple players in this half.
The entire starting lineup (Denver Jones, Chad Baker-Mazara, Miles Kelly, Chaney Johnson, and Dylan Cardwell), as well as Tahaad Pettiford, had major contributions in the final 20 minutes. These Tigers all stepped up in the absence of Johni Broome.
Pettiford led the Tigers in points in the second half with nine, followed by Jones (8), Kelly (8) and Cardwell (7). Johnson had the most rebounds (5) and led the team in plus/minus at 14. Everyone stepped up to win this game and kept themselves on top of the SEC and college basketball world.
The Tigers move on from one Bulldog to the next as they travel to Athens, Georgia, where they will face the Georgia Bulldogs. Tipoff is at 12 p.m. on Saturday, January 18th.
