‘They outplayed us.’ Everything Bruce Pearl said after Kentucky basketball won at Auburn.

For the first time in more than a calendar year, Auburn men’s basketball lost a home game.

A 16-game winning streak for the Tigers inside Neville Arena on The Plains was snapped Saturday night by Kentucky basketball. The Wildcats defeated the Tigers 70-59 for UK’s most impressive win of the 2023-24 season.

For Auburn, the root cause of Saturday’s defeat was a horrific offensive night. Despite playing against a much-maligned UK defense, Auburn scored just 59 points on 30.9% shooting from the field, 18.2% shooting from 3-point range and 70% shooting from the foul line.

Auburn’s 59 points were the fewest the Tigers had scored in a home game this season.

The Tigers only had three players score in double figures, with Johni Broome and Chad Baker-Mazara tying for the team lead with 14 points each. Auburn averaged just 0.908 points per possession for the game, quite a contrast to Auburn’s most recent home game, in which the Tigers scored 101 points against a ranked South Carolina team.

Auburn also never led in Saturday’s game, which was played in front of boisterous sell-out crowd.

Afterward, Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl — a longtime coaching adversary of John Calipari — spoke to reporters at Neville Arena about losing to Kentucky and the factors that contributed to seeing his team’s lengthy home winning streak come to an end.

Here’s everything that Pearl said:

Opening statement

Kentucky can guard and they can turn it up when they want to. They outplayed us tonight; they played really well. We knew their guards were excellent, and late in the game, when it came down to just getting decent shots and keeping us at bay, they were able to do that.

(Antonio) Reeves has killed us every year — I think I talked about it the other day... Big guard, able to make shots. We held them to 70 (points), they average 90. We played hard and obviously made some plays defensively. But their ball pressure disrupted us.

Our point guards didn’t have an assist and just one basket. Their ball pressure from their guards really wouldn’t allow us to get the ball into places on the floor that we kind of needed to be able to execute our offense or get the ball inside to Jaylin Williams, or get the ball inside to Johni (Broome) more.

I think that, while I’m disappointed in the outcome... When somebody plays better than you, my hat’s off to them. That’s why we didn’t win.

Question about the injury suffered by Jaylin Williams.

Jaylin is arguably — he and Johni are our two best players. We were in range when he got hurt. We think he’s got to have something; we think it’s something. It’s not just a bang; he had pivot. We’ll do an MRI tomorrow and then we’ll take a look at it.

Question about the rotation of guards due to foul trouble.

Yeah the rotation was all disrupted. It’s partly disrupted because Denver (Jones) and K.D. (Johnson) had been playing well, and moving Denver to be playing a little bit of point guard. We got into some foul trouble. We weren’t playing great at the position. There was some disruption there.

Question about Tre Donaldson only playing 11 minutes.

He had four fouls. He picked up his fourth foul early in the second half.

Question about how much different the Kentucky defense was compared to what he’d seen on film.

I thought they were more physical, I do. There were a couple of plays that I’m going to send into the league that were real physical. That’s what happens. What happens is — and I’ve seen this a couple times — when kids get challenged about not playing hard and not playing physically, well then they go out there and play hard and play physically.

Question about Auburn’s shot selection.

No, I give Kentucky more credit for that. I would give their defense more credit for that. Yes, we missed open shots. No, we didn’t make many tough shots. Johni made some tough shots inside. I thought we could have gotten better looks. We’ve been getting better looks. If you look at the South Carolina game, two completely different games. Offensive efficiency numbers in the South Carolina game were record breaking, we basically came down and scored every time. We put the ball wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted, did whatever we wanted.

Kentucky disrupted us. Their length at the rim obviously disrupted us. Their ball pressure disrupted us. They had a good scout. I really think you just go, ‘Alright, Kentucky guards like this, they can beat anybody.’ But we know that. Where are they ranked? They’re a nationally ranked team. They’re a 3 or 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They played well and we didn’t, and that’s why we got beat.

Question about being concerned after recent losses to Florida and Kentucky.

I mean, I’m not worried about it. You know how I felt about this team from the very beginning. I said this is a good team with a chance to be a very good team. What they’ve shown is they’re actually a very good team with a chance to maybe be a great team. We weren’t very good tonight. I kind of going in sort of expected to see this at times against the best teams on our schedule.

I still like our team. I do. We’re going to have to, if Jaylin’s out, we’re going to have to figure some things out. I think we have guys that will step up. But Jaylin Williams is, he and Johni Broome are our two best players. So if he’s out for a little while, it’s got to be next man up. That’s a significant loss.

Question about how to potentially have to make up for what Jaylin Williams brings to the court.

Jaylin Williams is Auburn’s all-time winningest player, ever, by a bunch of games. And he’s having a phenomenal senior season. And it’s not like I’m giving the scouting report away. But when Jaylin Williams has played well, we’ve won. And he’s only really not played well in about four or five games.

Those have happened to be the games we lost. The math’s kind of scary. So give Jaylin Williams credit. The depth on this team and the chemistry on this team — we’ll put it together. We’ll get something, we’ll be ready for the next one.

Follow-up question about what plays Bruce Pearl wants to send to the league.

There were a couple of plays. There are definitely going to be a couple of plays, because — boy I tell you, it happens in the heat of the battle, so. You’ve got to play hard.

Question about Auburn’s next game at Georgia next weekend.

Well listen, we play Georgia next Saturday. We get a bye this week. We need a bye. Our kids, listen, our guys, they’ve been grinding. I’m telling you. I’m so proud of them for the position that they’re in right now. I really am.

So we’ll take a couple days off this week. We will. They need it. They’ve earned it. We’ll see if we can regroup a little bit. We need to get better guard play. It’s clear. It’s clear we need to get better guard play. We’ll see if those guys can get it all figured out.

Question about the Kentucky loss being demoralizing.

This was not a demoralizing game. That’s a good team that played a really good game. What’s demoralizing about a loss to Kentucky when they play well. I can’t even begin to answer that. Do I look demoralized to you? Anybody think I’m demoralized?

The point is, and this is what I want you guys to understand. Our guys have been achieving at a high level. They’ve been, and oh by the way, you know what’s funny? I looked at the schedule the other day. We’re playing South Carolina. They’re 20-3. They’ve won seven in a row. I said to my son Steven. I said, ‘You know what? This might be the easiest game of the next four.’

Looking at Kentucky here, even going on the road to Georgia, then going to Tennessee. For these kids to have grinded and be in the position? Guys, come on. Demoralized?

Question about the turnover differential.

They don’t turn it over. They turned it over 12 times, which is more than they usually do. We were real organized in some of our running and jumping and there were times late we probably should have doubled. We did a couple times and turned them over.

They’ve got pretty good guard play. They stopped running ball screens and that was probably a good idea because we were just hitting them in the ball screen, double-teaming them in the ball screen and they just started doing their other things: Spreading the floor and spacing out and attacking us one one-on-one. Reeves kinda took over. (Adou) Thiero really stepped up in a big, big way and outplayed us at his position.

If you told me we’re gonna hold Kentucky to only four 3-pointers, I’d say we would have beat ‘em. So give Kentucky credit for finding other ways to win. They had an injury to one of their kids (Tre Mitchell) and they did a really good job of finding a way to win in another way.

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