Fresh off a 76-67 road win over Florida, Auburn returns to Neville Arena Wednesday night riding a three-game win streak to host Texas in the fourth-ever meeting between the two programs.
“While I said Florida was the best team in our league, this is the most dangerous team in our league,” Auburn head coach Steven Pearl said of the Longhorns. “It’s not even close in my opinion.”
Texas owns four ranked wins over No. 23 NC State, No. 13 Alabama, No. 10 Vanderbilt and No. 21 Georgia, which is more than any team in the SEC.
Dailyn Swain, who paces Texas with 16.9 points per game, is one of four Longhorns averaging at least 13 points per outing.
“They’ve got four phenomenal players who are going to do a lot of really good things for them,” Pearl said. “It’s been keeping me up at night because they’re probably the most talented team from a guard standpoint that we’ve played up to this point.”
Auburn will again rely on its defense to fuel its fourth straight victory. During the Tigers’ three-game win streak, they have held their opponents under 70 points and less than 40% shooting from the floor.
“Every game I try to put myself in the mindset of we have to win the guard matchup,” said Kevin Overton, who leads Auburn with 31 steals. “Not necessarily by outscoring or outplaying. For me, it’s defense. If we can lock down those guards, I think that changes everything in the game. My approach, especially to this next game, is stopping who we need to stop.”
After a 2-0 week on the road capped by Saturday’s historic win over Florida, Pearl said maintaining the edge that produced those results will be critical moving forward.
“We can’t let success change us. We’ve got to stay consistent with everything we’ve been doing,” Pearl said. “Those are two tough places to play. To do it in two hostile environments shows that there’s been progress made, but what do we do from here?"
“If we let this thing get to our heads and we don’t get ready for Texas – we’ve got to keep that chip on our shoulder. We’ve got to have our backs against the wall," he added. "That’s the only way we can play well. That’s what we have to do to beat this team.”
Tipoff against the Longhorns is set for 6 p.m. on ESPN2 at Neville Arena.
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