After an offseason of celebration, the Auburn basketball program finally returned to the court to begin the 2019-20 college basketball season — and it found itself in a close ballgame.

The Tigers were tested out of the gates by a scrappy Georgia Southern team, ultimately securing a 83-74 win in front of the home crowd at Auburn Arena.

"We didn't expect to come in here and blow these guys out," Auburn wing Samir Doughty said. They're a veteran team."

"This was one of the most challenging scouts for an opening game that I've had in a long time," Bruce Pearl added.

The early issues for Pearl’s squad arose from turnovers. The Tigers had 13 of them in the first half, which led to 17 Georgia Southern points. Auburn cut that number down to eight in the second half but still struggled to work the ball inside consistently to bigs, whether it be from errant alley-oop attempts or inability to corral passes — or both.

Despite that, senior center Austin Wiley posted a near-double-double with 13 points and 9 boards in 20 minutes played.

Like in the exhibition win last Friday, fellow seniors Samir Doughty and Danjel Purifoy helped lead the offense with 20 (a game-high) and 13 points, respectively.

Doughty also swiped four steals, gathered six rebounds and dished four assists. His plus/minus of 12 was second behind Devan Cambridge's 19.

"Samir made plays," Pearl said. "Not afraid. A lot of ways, helped win the ballgame for us, because he makes plays, offensively and defensively. It’s good to have him on the ball.

After a sloppy start in which he was held scoreless and committed five turnovers in the opening 20 minutes, J’Von McCormick had none in the second half and dropped nine points.

In his first career start, true freshman Isaac Okoro, who was heralded in the offseason by Pearl as one of the best defenders to ever play for him, had an efficient day on the other side of the floor in addition to his defense. The former 5-star prospect made 6 of 9 field-goal attempts, scoring 12 points to go with five rebounds.

Georgia Southern worked its way to as big as a 6-point lead in the opening half before Auburn got a string of defensive stops to end the period. The freshman Cambridge’s back-to-back 3-point jumpers with a minute left in the first half helped Auburn regain the lead, then take a 4-point advantage into the break.

"They were quicker at every position, and they were really good at driving downhill," Pearl said. "So guys gave them too many direct-line drives, didn’t compete to stay in front, and as a result they had their way with us. We are able to do a lot of things defensively to cover up some of those challenges, but not against a smaller, quicker team.

"We just couldn’t disrupt them as much as we normally did. Had to kind of build a wall, guard our yard, and show way more help than I like to show. But the defense was better in the second half."

With an 8-0 run, Auburn grabbed its first double-digit lead of the game (largest of the night) nearing 12 minutes to play in the second half, as Purifoy, Doughty and Wiley all climbed into double digits in the scoring column.

Georgia Southern banged with the Tigers late and forced Auburn to earn its points at the line. Pearl's squad responded, making 15 of 19 attempts at the charity stripe in the final 20 minutes.

Auburn next travels to Annapolis, Md., for a showdown with Davidson on Friday.

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