After staving off an upset bid, top-ranked Auburn will look to increase its national-best winning streak to 20 games Tuesday night when the Tigers face Southeastern Conference rival Arkansas in Fayetteville, Ark.
The Tigers (22-1, 10-0 SEC) almost saw their No. 1 ranking and winning streak go up in smoke Saturday before escaping from Georgia with a 74-72 road win.
Wendell Green Jr. broke the tie with 3.3 seconds left. Even that wasn’t easy: With time running out, Green raced down court, crashed into a defender and lost the ball before retrieving it and scoring the winning points.
Green’s dramatics helped prevent Auburn from losing for the first time since dropping a double-overtime encounter against then-No. 22 Connecticut on Nov. 24.
“We’ve just got winners,” Green said afterward. “No matter what the circumstance is, we believe in each other. We’re 22-1 for a reason. We’ve got winners. We believe we can win against any team in the country, and we’ve got big-time players who are going to make big-time plays.”
The Tigers will face a Razorbacks squad that also is hot. Arkansas (18-5, 7-3) has won eight consecutive games since losing to Texas A&M on Jan. 8.
With the team’s confidence soaring, Razorbacks forward Jaylin Williams indicated he isn’t the least bit impressed with Auburn’s No. 1 tag.
“It’s just a ranking. It doesn’t mean anything,” Williams said after Saturday’s 63-55 home win over Mississippi State. “It’s a normal game to us. Every game is the biggest game of the year for us. It’s just a number. We’re ready to play them.”
Arkansas leading scorer JD Notae was just 4-of-16 shooting against the Bulldogs. He still finished with 14 points and has reached double digits in all 22 games in which he has played. Notae averages 18.7 points per game.
Chris Lykes, the 5-foot-7 guard who transferred from Miami, hasn’t met expectations stemming from twice averaging 15 points per game with the Hurricanes. But he responded well from a sharp decrease in playing time by increasing his defensive intensity and he has six steals over the past two games.
“I’ve really taken it up a notch the past few weeks in terms of focus,” Lykes said after Saturday’s game. “I just don’t want to be a liability out there. … I would rather be the aggressor on defense.”
Arkansas has held five SEC foes under 60 points, so the contest with Auburn rates as a big test.
The Tigers have scored 80 or more in seven of their 10 SEC games, topped by a 100-81 win over Alabama on Feb. 1. For the season, they average 80.3 points and have four players averaging in double digits.
Jabari Smith leads Auburn’s balanced lineup with 15.3 points to go with 6.7 rebounds, K.D. Johnson scores 13.5 per game, Green averages 12.9 points and 4.8 assists and Walker Kessler averages 11.4 points, leads the team in rebounding (7.9 per game) and ranks second nationally with 97 blocked shots.
The status of Auburn point guard Zep Jasper is unclear after he missed the Georgia game with a non-COVID illness.
“I’m not sure any one of our guys would feel like this is one of our better nights,” Tigers coach Bruce Pearl said after the effort against Georgia. “We missed Zep Jasper, our best perimeter defender, in a big way,”
The Razorbacks defeated Auburn in both meetings last season — 97-85 on the road and 75-73 in Fayetteville.
–Field Level Media