No. 1 Auburn Tigers Make a Believer Out of Ole Miss Coach Chris Beard

The No. 1 Auburn Tigers got off to a fast start in their 106-76 victory over Ole Miss on Wednesday night. They held a 29-9 lead before 10 minutes had ticked off the clock.

Ole Miss head coach Chris Beard wasn’t overly critical of his Rebels’ squad despite the 30-point loss. Sure, he’d like to see better defense, but he understands there will be nights like this, on the road, against the nation’s No. 1 team.

“I think the tale of the game for us,” Beard said after the game. “If you had told me before the game that we could get to 80-something points (76), that we were gonna shoot close to 50 from the field (47.1%), make some threes right around mid-30’s (35.7%), get to the free throw line more or equal to Auburn (31-33), and take care of the ball relatively well, 10 or less turnovers (10), I wouldn’t have predicted that we were going to win the game, but I would have predicted we have a chance to win the game.”

The Rebels didn’t play a bad game on the offensive side of the court. It was the other side that was their downfall.

“But that wasn’t the story,” Beard lamented. “Y’all saw it. ‘Cause on the other side of the floor, just non-existent defense from Ole Miss. It’s not just the players, it’s everybody in the program.”

While Beard initially called it non-existent defense, he gave plenty of credit to Bruce Pearl’s squad for making their defense look non-existent.

“I think you give Auburn credit, very, very difficult to guard,” said Beard. “Especially when they’re making shots like they were basically in the first six to eight minutes in the game, they won’t lose.

“But no, defense just non-existent, and I would say a lot of it had to do with Auburn,” Beard repeated. “Very difficult to guard. They come at you in waves with depth, so that was the tale of the game from our perspective.”

Auburn had been in several slugfests recently. They’ve had to grind out games in the rugged SEC. After a hard-fought contest against Georgia over the weekend, Pearl admitted Auburn was getting every team’s best shot. The Bulldogs turned around and beat No. 2 Florida their next time out.

They’ve also shown they can win a track meet. Auburn shot nearly 60% from the floor (59.6%) on Wednesday. They were 11-21 from behind the arc (52.4%), and hit their free throws (27-33, 81.8%). They had 20 assists to eight turnovers.

They only missed 23 times from the floor, but they got 10 offensive rebounds.

No, the Tigers aren’t going to lose when they play like that.

With three games left in the regular season, Auburn took another step towards sewing up the regular season SEC championship. When it comes to even bigger goals, Beard is a believer in the nation’s No. 1 team.

“As good as advertised,” said Beard. “We’ve played Auburn 80 minutes this season, veteran team, older team, returners. Coach has been doing this for a long time. So yeah just as good as advertised.

“A team that definitely, in my opinion is one of the handful of teams that would be kind of be one of the favorites to win six games in three weekends.”

Auburn’s season ended sooner than they hoped last year, but Bruce Pearl’s Tigers are stalking bigger prey in 2025.