Auburn’s coming off its best win of the season defeating No. 12 Missouri 88-82 on Tuesday.

But next up is a team that Bruce Pearl thinks could be the best team he’s ever coached against: No. 2 Baylor.

“They’ve led for most of the season. This will be a great, great challenge,” Pearl said. “There’s a chance they’re the best team I’ve played against. Like, period. I’ve been doing this a long time. They’re really good. And yet, we’re working really hard to try and prepare to try and have a chance to beat them.”

Baylor is 15-0 on the season and coming off a 107-59 thrashing of Kansas State.

What makes the Bears so deadly, though, is their ability to beat teams with strong offense, strong defense or a mixture of both.

“They can beat you with really efficient offense, the numbers are incredible,” Pearl said. “You know, like five or six guys shooting better than 40% from three. Like eight players shooting better than 47% overall, they’re extremely efficient. They’ve got three great guards. They’ve got two of the best defensive guards in the country, three of the best defensive players in the country.”

Jared Butler, Mark Vital and Davion Mitchell were all named to the Midseason Team for Naismith Defensive Player of the Year on Thursday.

Butler also leads the team in scoring, averaging 16.8 points per game while shooting 50.6% from the floor and 48.2% from beyond the arc.

And a familiar face for Auburn, Mitchell, is third in scoring for Baylor. Mitchell is averaging 12.8 points per game and shooting 53% from the floor and 47% from deep.

“Well, they’re so gifted from three with so many guys that can shoot it from great range,” Pearl said. “You’ve gotta go out there and guard them and yet, they can beat you off the bounce one-on-one almost whenever they want to. And because of their ability to — help has to come — they got guys that fly over the backside and kill you on the offensive glass. Teams that can penetrate are great offensive rebounding teams and when they get you in a rotation, that’s when they clean everything up on the backside. So, that’ll be a challenge to guard them from three, guard them off the bounce and keep them off the offensive glass.”

Pearl also knows that what Auburn does well doesn’t necessarily have a strong impact on Baylor’s gameplan.

“Part of our strengths, ourselves, defensively with our length and our shot-blocking, Baylor will shoot a lot of three balls and the stuff that they get at the rim is typically off offensive rebounds or really easy spoon-feeds,” Pearl said. “They don’t go to the foul line a lot because they don’t create a ton of contact to get there. Teams that shoot lots of free throws give you also an opportunity to block a lot of shots and that won’t be the case at Baylor so that will be a challenge for us because it’s obviously something we do very well.”

Auburn, winners of four of its last five and 10-7 overall now, takes on No. 2 Baylor at 3 p.m. CST with the game broadcasted on ESPN.

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