Auburn defeats South Carolina, wins outright SEC regular-season title

Auburn is cutting down the nets in Neville Arena. The No. 5 Tigers had already clinched a share of the regular-season SEC title heading into the regular-season finale. On Saturday, Bruce Pearl’s squad topped South Carolina 82-71 to finish 15-3 in SEC play, taking the outright conference title.

KD Johnson cuts down the nets in Neville Arena pic.twitter.com/h9nENi6UsX

— Bryan Matthews (@BMattAU) March 5, 2022

Jabari Smith led the way for Auburn with 21 points on 5-of-12 shooting from the floor, including 3-3 from 3-point territory. Smith also led the Tigers in rebounds with 6.

The Gamecocks did not lead Saturday Auburn, though South Carolina’s Jermaine Couisnard was the game’s high scorer with 22 points on 6-of-17 shooting.

Auburn and South Carolina were statistically close in the final box score, with bench points standing out 19-9 in AU’s favor.

The 2022 SEC Tournament begins Wednesday as the bottom four teams take the court in Tampa. Auburn will next play on Friday, facing the winner of Thursday’s No. 8-seed/No. 9-seed game.

Alone at the

️ #WarEagle pic.twitter.com/J0cDhU9iBJ

— Auburn Basketball (@AuburnMBB) March 5, 2022

Andrew Olson

Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.