Sharife Cooper was the star of the show in Auburn’s upset over No. 12 Missouri. There’s no doubt about that. But the Auburn bench, led by Chris Moore, stepped up to help Cooper along the way.

Moore finished the game with a career-high 11 points, shooting a perfect 4-of-4 from the floor and 3-of-3 from beyond the arc. Moore finished the game plus-10 in 14 minutes of play.

“You know, it felt great,” Moore said. “You know, all my life has been about confidence. When I got here, I was still, you know, just a shot of confidence, but the coaching staff been getting on me all year about shooting my shot. That’s kind of in our DNA, and you know, just me making shots, coming through for the team was real big. It felt good out there to make a lot of big shots.”

Devan Cambridge and Dylan Cardwell both finished with eight points off the bench. Cardwell was 6-of-7 from the free throw line, connecting on a pair of key free throws late to help extend Auburn’s lead.

“Happy for the bench. The bench did a great job tonight,” Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl said. “We outscored them, outplayed them off the bench, which is terrific. Led by Devan Cambridge. Dylan Cardwell was 6-7 from the foul line. Chris played his best game. Javon came in and gave us some great moments.”

Auburn finished the game with 34 of its 88 points coming from players off the bench.

“You know, it was all about not dropping off. The coaching staff always emphasizes when our starters come out, we can’t drop off, we got to keep the energy going, sometimes bringing more than the starters,” Moore said about the bench play tonight. “That’s kind of what our offense is about, bringing the energy, bringing the thing that we need to keep the tide rolling. That’s kind of what we do.”

Also contributing off the bench and a big part of Auburn’s 14 total blocks was Stretch Akingbola.

Akingbola played just eight minutes, but finished the game with three points, four rebounds and five blocks.

“And Stretch had five blocks in a very short period of time. That’s just huge,” Pearl said. “We have some weaknesses, we have some warts, but we have some length.”

Moore and the rest of the Tigers now turn their attention to a trip to No. 2 Baylor on Saturday.

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