Jared Harper knew what he was doing on two-straight possessions.

Tied at 60 with 1:30 to play, Auburn's point guard stared down his Alabama defender Herbert Jones. He crossed over between his legs, hesitated, then took off toward the basket, finishing at the rim. One possession later, and the same two-point lead intact, Harper took a slightly different approach against his new defender Kira Lewis. But the result was the same. Harper laid it in.

A Samir Doughty steal immediately after led to two made free throws.

And just like that: Auburn, who trailed by 13 points in the second half, pulled out a 66-60 win on the road against Alabama.

"It was ugly. It wasn't pretty except the outcome," Bruce Pearl said.

After a poor-shooting first half, Auburn went into the halftime break with an 11-point deficit. The Tigers only shot 32 percent from the floor — 3-for-13 from deep — in the first half compared to the Crimson Tide's 54 percent half.

The lead was stretched even further, to 36-23, a few minutes into the second half.

Auburn soon cut it to single digits. From there, however, frustration appeared to mount. A tag team of Auburn players went to a referee at a timeout after a non-call. More words were exchanged between the Tigers' bench and officials. When play returned, Bruce Pearl had been assessed a technical foul that stretched the Auburn deficit back to double digits.

That's when Auburn turned it on.

The Tigers rode an 18-2 run after that.

Down 9, Malik Dunbar got a steal, pushed the fast break and dished it to Harper who laid it in. Immediately after, Chuma Okeke forced a turnover off the inbounds pass. Okeke recovered the deflection in the corner and fired up a 3-pointer that cut the game to four points.

"Chuma Okeke was my guy," Pearl said. "He was the matchup. He was the guy we went to. He was the guy they had a hard time matching up with. He's just a really good player."

Dunbar provide a nice second-half spark of the bench. He hit the 3-pointer that tied the game up at 45.

Even with all the momentum in Auburn's favor, Alabama didn't go away quietly.

Every time the Tigers jumped out to an advantage — a Dunbar fastbreak layup or Bryce Brown 3-pointer — the Crimson Tide responded. That trend continued all the way up until the final two minutes of the game when Tevin Mack hit a 3 to square the score at 60.

Then Harper took over the final 1:30.

It capped off a second half that was much different than the first from a shooting percentage perspective. Auburn shot 48 percent from the floor to Alabama's 35 percent.

Points off turnovers also turned out to be one of the biggest difference in the game. The Tigers won the points-off-turnover battle 28-8.

"I think we just battled the whole game," Harper said. "Down by 11 at halftime, we tried to focus on our defense. We locked in our defense and let our defense lead to our offense."

PLAYER OF THE GAME: Chuma Okeke — This was a no-brainer. Okeke was lights out. He was the matchup Pearl exploited all night long. Okeke finished with 17 points, 14 rebounds and 3 assists.

PLAY OF THE GAME: Chuma Okeke steal off inbounds and corner 3 — To me, this play came at a really important time and signaled how much the momentum had shifted. Harper had just made a layup to cut the game to 7 points. Right after, Okeke full-court pressed and deflected a lazy pass. He recovered it himself and drained it from the corner. That was when everyone realized Auburn wasn't out of this game, after all.

STAT OF THE NIGHT: First time since 1967 — This stat had nothing to do with the game specifically. But with the win over the Crimson Tide, Auburn swept Alabama and Georgia in the same season for the first time in 52 years. As Bruce Pearl pointed out on the postgame radio broadcast, that was the year Boston Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski won the Triple Crown.

QUOTE OF THE NIGHT: Bruce Pearl talking about winning fights — "Like anybody in a boxing match, if you've ever been in a fight, and I've been in a couple — I'm actually 1-2, one win and two losses. I have a big nose and big, fat lip. But the key is, you'll get hit more than once. You can go out and get hit a couple times and fall down and cover up. Or you can stay in there and keep swinging and get hit a few more times. That's what happened to us. We didn't fall down. We just hung in there."