The Auburn men’s basketball team closed non-conference play Monday night with a dominant 106-65 win over Queens at Neville Arena.<\/p>\n
The win pushes the Tigers’ record to 9-4 as SEC play is set to start on Saturday with a road trip to Athens to face Georgia.<\/p>\n
The Tigers used big games from Elyjah Freeman, who scored 27 points, and Kevin Overton, who scored 23, to earn the easy victory. The Tigers scored 24 seconds into the game and led the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
The 3-pointer was a major difference in the game, as Auburn made 15 shots from behind the arc and Queens made just two. Leading the 3-point barrage were Overton, who made five 3-pointers, and Freeman, who was 4-for-4 from behind the arc.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the most part, we stayed in a stance and communicated our switches,\u201d said Auburn head coach Steven Pearl. \u201cWe kind of made them beat us from two. Overall, a really good effort on their three-pointers because obviously it is a a really important piece of what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Overton\u2019s impact extended not just from his offense, but also from his defense. He had four steals in the game as the Tigers had 13 steals as a team.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is that third scorer for us. He is playing with a lot of confidence right now and if he can see it then he can make it, which is great,\u201d Pearl said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how many threes he made against NC State, but I think he has made like 10 to 12 threes in the last two games in Neville. Good to see him playing with a lot of confidence, I think a lot of it got started with his defense though. He had four steals in this game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freeman has come off the bench for the last three games after starting before that. He has provided a spark for the team when coming in during those games.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike (Steven Pearl) said, I just felt like it was the best option for the whole entire team. I\u2019m not really a selfish kid, so I just felt like me coming off the bench, I know what I\u2019m capable of in any situation,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cPutting (Sebastian Williams-Adams) at the four, he can play make, and he\u2019s good at that in practice. A lot of people don\u2019t know how good he can pass. Just being able to come off the bench with a little bit of spark, I felt like that helped, and hopefully it shows Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
While scoring just five points, Tahaad Pettiford dished out a career-high nine assists in the game. As a team, the Tigers had 22 assists \u2014 Pearl said their goal was to have between 20 and 25.<\/p>\n
SEC play begins for the Tigers on Saturday when they visit No. 23 Georgia. Tipoff is set for noon with a television broadcast on the SEC Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Auburn men’s basketball team closed non-conference play Monday night with a dominant 106-65 win over Queens at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[39029,9,24,63,122,124,123,319],"class_list":{"0":"post-84759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-auburn_university","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-queens","13":"tag-queens-headlines","14":"tag-queens-news","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}