Auburn needed a closer down the stretch, and its senior center responded to the call to the bullpen.
Austin Wiley led the Tigers in scoring for just the second time this season, dropping 15 points and corralling 11 rebounds as Auburn won its penultimate home game of the season, 67-58 over Ole Miss on Tuesday night.
"Austin was physically dominant in there, and that meant a lot," said Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl.
Wiley played just six minutes in the first half after sitting for the final nine minutes with two fouls. In the second half, particularly as Auburn (24-4, 11-4 SEC) worked to hold off mini Ole Miss runs and rebuild its lead, Wiley was effective in breaking the Rebels’ tricky zone defense that mostly restricted Auburn to the perimeter when Wiley wasn’t on the floor.
"Coach (Pearl) told me I was going to play most of the second half," Wiley said. "So just be smart with the fouls, and he was going to keep me out there. So that's what I tried to do."
He succeeded mightily in that endeavor. Wiley picked up no fouls in the second half, had no turnovers and patrolled the paint late, blocking two shots in the final three minutes.
Nine of the senior’s 15 points came in the final eight minutes of the game, and eight of his 11 rebounds came in the second half.
His contributions on both ends of the floor helped Auburn out-score the Rebels 38-18 in the paint.
"We worked on that in practice, just getting me the ball inside," Wiley said of the game plan for Ole Miss. "Because they don’t have a lot of five-men, or a lot of guys my size on their team, so every time I get it I try to go up strong."
The performance marked Wiley’s 12th double-double of the season, as he rebounded 31% of both teams’ missed shots during his 22 minutes on the court and turned in a team-high plus/minus of plus-13.
Fellow big man Jaylin Williams continued to strengthen Auburn's frontcourt in his third consecutive game playing double-digit minutes. The freshman has six points on 3-of-4 shooting, including two put-back buckets, to go with three rebounds and one eye-popping assist to Anfernee McLemore in the first half.
Pearl said Williams now solidifying a spot in the rotation gives Auburn a chance to go big with its lineups more often because Isaac Okoro, who returned Tuesday after missing three games with a hamstring injury, won't have to log occasional minutes at power forward and can stay playing the wing position.
Though Auburn dominated the paint, Pearl thought his team was out-muscled. That's something the Tigers can't afford when they play SEC No. 1 Kentucky on Saturday in Lexington.
"I didn’t think we did a very good job with our offensive rebounding tonight," Pearl said. "We were not the more physical team. That’ll be something we’ve really got to get fixed."
Auburn led by as many as 14 early before the Rebels clawed back and took advantage of cold shooting stretches from the Tigers. Ole Miss cut it to as close as 41-39 with 10 minutes to play.
Samir Doughty was Auburn's second-leading scorer with 14 points. Ole Miss committed 17 turnovers on the evening.
Tipoff against Kentucky is set for 2:45 p.m. CST on Saturday.
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