Kent State battled back, played tough and played as hard as they could last night at Auburn, but fell 79-56 to the #5 ranked team in the country.
The win marked Auburn’s 56th consecutive non-conference home win, in what was the 57th straight sellout at Neville Arena which holds 9,121.
Early on it looked like the Flashes may be blown out as two early fouls on Von Cameron Davis led to an early 10-0 deficit, which ballooned to 30-8 at one point.
Using a 2-3 zone, some physical play inside and taking care of the basketball, the Flashes were able to outscore Auburn 29-11 from the 7:10 mark of the first half that spanned until the 15:38 mark of the second half.
Davis returned in the second half to score the first 11 points for the Flashes during that run.
But in the end it was too much size, physicality and length for the Tigers led by All-American 6-10 big Johni Broome who had 18 points and 12 rebounds.
Auburn had 23 assists on 28 baskets, held a 41-33 rebounding advantage, only turned it over six times and held a 42-26 advantage in the paint.
“Von starting the game out with three fouls in the first half really stagnated us,” KSU assistant Randal Holt said on the postgame show. “He’s one of our leaders. He’s a veteran player for us and we need him on the floor so that kind of set us back a little bit in the first half and we got off to a slow start. And then we were able to find a groove a little bit.”
“But you got to give those guys credit. They’re a top five team in the county for a reason. They play well, they execute, they shared the ball, they had 23 assists today. So, you got to tip your hat off to those guys. But yeah, Von getting in foul trouble really got us off to a slow start.”
“We beat a good Kent State team,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said. “We did not have a letdown after the big victory on Saturday.”
Kent State doesn’t play for eight days until November 21 when they host Niagara. After playing three very different opponents, the Flashes can assess, get better and get rest.
“We’ll go back to the drawing board; we’ll go back to practice. We’ll try to get better at some things we need to clean up offensively and defensively and it’ll be good for us to get some guys rested; to get some treatment, we got a couple guys banged up so that’ll be really good for us.”
TOUGHNESS TAKEAWAY: Kent State could have folded up when it was 30-8 and Davis on the bench. But that’s not in their DNA. These games are played to get something out of it. Playing in that environment should help the Flashes when big moments arrive at the JAR down the road or at The Convo in Athens. They battled back and played solid basketball during a 29-11 stretch, that cut the deficit to four in the second half. Kent State won’t see that size, and skill in the league. Hopefully the right mix of confidence and recognition of what to get better at came out of the trip.
“Well, we wanted to come into this game with tremendous toughness,” Holt told Rob Polinsky on the radio postgame. “We wanted to play with a lot of confidence, and we wanted to play with a lot of toughness. And I think our guys came out with the right mindset as far as fighting and playing hard and competing really, really tough. So, I think moving forward that’s something that we can build on as far as that’s the mindset we got to have going into every single game. But again, we got to better in some areas in order to win these types of games.”
“Our team shows a lot of resilience. They showed toughness, they showed togetherness. And they fought possession by possession to get the ball game back to a reasonable range. It’s just some things we got to clean up on the defensive end as well as the offensive end, and again those guys are a top five team in the country for a reason and when it was time for those guys to make plays, they made plays. We got to do a better job of focusing in, getting off to a better start and kind of eliminating some of those big runs that we’ve been giving up so far.”
TAKING CARE OF IT: Kent State only committed eight turnovers against a team that Senderoff said pressured the ball more than any team in his 14 years that the Flashes have played. Credit to them for taking care of the ball and getting more shot attempts on the rim than Auburn.
I thought the ball pressure did take Kent State out of some things offensively in the half court and stagnated them at times and made them drive it and get deep into the clock.
Playing with multiple ball handlers, and wings and bigs who are improving passers will help KSU win the possession battle this year.
PLAYING WITHOUT VCD: Davis was limited to just over three minutes of playing time in the first half with three fouls in the half. In the second half, he asserted himself into the game by scoring the first 11 for KSU. Davis finished with 19 points in 18 minutes.
Without him the Flashes became a little more perimeter as expected with Jalen Sullinger contributing 16 points off the bench on 6-9 shooting.
IN THE ZONE: Once again, the Flashes got a lot of mileage out of their 2-3 tandem half court zone. With foul trouble and against the size of Auburn, the zone helped KSU get back in the game. They do a nice job of their wings being “out and up” and they are able to force some tough two-point shots. They have played more zone the last two years than ever before under Senderoff.
JOIN THE COLLECTIVE: Senderoff has been sending out video blogs via text message to all Blue and Gold Collective members. Wednesday’s update came from Neville Arena where he spent a few minutes previewing the game. Join the Collective today to get those updates and a lot more.