Auburn's head coach weighed in on the team's defensive effort against Vanderbilt.
The Auburn Tigers failed to come out on top against Vanderbilt at home inside Neville Arena on Tuesday night, but head coach Steven Pearl still found some things he liked from their performance.
One of those things was the way Auburn performed on the defensive end of the floor, an effort he thought was decent overall.
"We did a good job on Nickel," Pearl said. "Yeah, 3-for-12, only 10 points. Tanner is 6-for-16, but he gets to the foul line 13 times. We really talked about limiting those two, and I thought for the most part, he got to the foul line probably six times late. I thought we did a decent job on those two. They just had some real step up from some of their other guys, and good teams will do that."
Vanderbilt had some offensive production come from unexpected places, something Pearl believed contributed to Auburn losing.
"Washington having 22 wasn't something that was on my bingo card, but credit to him, he played great," Pearl said. "I think I'll have to watch the film, and I can just see the effort that was there. I thought the execution wasn't, but part of that's on me, too."
Pearl acknowledged some of the things he thinks he could do better as the coach of the team, and how he could get the players in better positions to find success on both ends of the floor.
"I have got to do some things defensively to get us a little more active flying around and trying to be a little more aggressive like we were at the end," Pearl said. "We have to do some more of that moving forward, so that's on me as their coach. I have got to do a better job of putting them in positions to make plays."