GAME WRAP: Auburn 89, Kansas 75

Auburn wins, 89-75.

Auburn now is 28-9 overall.

AUBURN BY THE NUMBERS
2FG: 19-of-31 (61%)
3FG: 13-of-30 (43%)
FT: 12-of-15 (80%)

Kansas grabbed more rebounds, 38-27.

Auburn is 11-6 this season when being out-rebounded.

KANSAS BY THE NUMBERS
2FG: 21-of-40 (53%)
3FG: 6-of-19 (32%)
FT: 15-of-18 (83%)

MY AUBURN PLAYER OF THE GAME
G Bryce Brown: 25 points (9-for-13 shooting), 3 rebounds, 2 assists

FROM THE KANSAS SIDE

"They shot the ball extremely well. I didn't feel like the second half defensively our energy level was good enough to make them play poorly. We basically hoped they missed and they didn't. So you know we weren't good on that end at all." — Kansas coach Bill Self

"The whole game plan was to get out to the shooters. We did a pretty poor job really, me and myself getting back, and other guys getting out to the shooter, we let those guys get comfortable and that's what led to the big deficit in the first half." — Kansas forward Dedric Lawson

FROM THE AUBURN SIDE

• Auburn played well for much of its opening-round game against New Mexico State on Thursday, but faltered badly late. Auburn nearly lost the game. Still, Bruce Pearl told his team that every game represents a completely new opportunity to shine. The head coach said that one-point win would go down as a learning experience — understanding the dangers of allowing panic to affect operational processes — and his team pledged to move on to the next challenge. They said they could move forward immediately. A lot of people questioned that. I don't think anyone is questioning that now.

• Auburn played (perhaps) its best-ever half of basketball from the opening tip until halftime Saturday. The Tigers shot 56 percent from the floor including 9-of-17 from long range. That hot shooting coupled with some situationally excellent defense yielded a 51-25 lead that surprised everyone. Everyone who's been watching this team since, say, mid February knew it was learning from its mistakes and playing better ball and had become fully capable of melting faces. We saw plenty of Tennessee faces melted during the SEC Tournament final, which had been this team's high-water mark until Saturday night. To see Auburn annihilating a fully established program like Kansas, forcing its coach to call three rage timeouts, was the moment when everyone realized that Bruce Pearl's fifth Auburn team was on a different level.

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• Bryce Brown deserves all the commendations he'll receive after this one. You can see his final line above. He hit his first four shots from long range, which fueled that early Auburn rally that took Kansas by surprise. One could argue that string of accuracy paved the way for everything that happened after it. At the same time, it was Brown just doing what he does — getting open along the perimeter (or rolling off screens to his right) and launching balls without any semblance of conscience. If you feed him, he'll shoot. That's what he did.

• Anfernee McLemore was a big-time player tonight. Everything Kansas wants to accomplish on the scoring end involves power forward Dedric Lawson, who either scores himself or creates advantageous opportunities for his teammates. Auburn elected to front Lawson throughout the first half, which is a difficult and physically demanding job. McLemore handled that assignment without a hitch. He snatched a few lobs intended for Lawson, deflected a few more and made defensive rebounding a priority. Lawson finished with six points on 1-of-7 shooting during the first half. That prevented Kansas from being able to push back against Auburn's insane performance on the scoring end. McLemore deserves the lion's share of credit for keeping Lawson in check during the second half. (Lawson went off during the second half to the tune of 19 points, but the damage already had been done.)

• Auburn is at its most elite when it's flying in transition. The basic gist is: Deflect, steal, create space, push tempo, finish. That's what the Tigers did to overwhelm Kansas during the first half. We've talked a bunch in these pieces about how Auburn is the nation's best team when it comes to creating turnovers. Auburn created 16 Saturday night, used them to create 20 points. When the pace slowed during the second half, well, the Tigers slowed down as well.

• The strange thing about the second half Saturday was that Auburn's offense was still quite strong — but this team tends to overvalue three-point shooting in times of great success. The Tigers shot 31 percent from three after halftime, which is not great. The Tigers shot 8-of-12 from two after halftime, which is outstanding. Austin Wiley, Samir Doughty, J'von McCormick, Malik Dunbar all had great looks (that they finished) inside the arc during the second half. Had Auburn been more mindful of Kansas' extreme desire to take away the three and adjusted its scoring-end approach, this would have been a 30-point game at the buzzer.

• Auburn has trouble throttling down. It's impossible to play 40 minutes in hype mode — I don't care what Nolan Richardson says about that opinion — and it's reasonable to work the clock with a big lead. Why can't the Tigers manage those scenarios a bit more competently? They had scoring droughts of three minutes and four minutes during the final 12 minutes of the game Saturday. They were good about operating at a deliberate pace until the shot clock hit :07, but then things unraveled more often than not. I think it's a function of boredom rather than panic, but it's nonetheless an area in need of repair.

• I'll leave it with this thought: Auburn is a better basketball team than Kansas. That hasn't been said many times since 1985, which is a long time ago, yet it was provably true on this night. Pearl is doing exactly what he said he'd do. Even the biggest sunshine pumpers weren't sure if Pearl would be able to push Auburn to new heights when hired five years ago, but Pearl may have just pulled past Pat Dye as the most beloved coach in school history. A basketball coach of all things. Isn't that something?

• Auburn resumes play Friday against either Washington or North Carolina in Kansas City. The Huskies and Tar Heels square off Sunday beginning at approximately 1:40 p.m. on CBS.