Jerry Stackhouse details what went wrong for Vanderbilt during first-half Auburn run

Vanderbilt was competitive over the first eight minutes of their game with No. 13 Auburn in their game on Wednesday night. Then, over the final dozen minutes of the half, the Tigers blew it open and took the game from that moment on.

Jerry Stackhouse assessed what went wrong for his team to end the first half in his postgame press conference after the 80-65 loss to Auburn. He said it was clearly just a rough run on offense that took them out of the game. In that same time, the Tigers were able to extend it to double digits for good.

“We had a drought, a scoring drought. We didn’t score ourselves,” said Stackhouse. “I think that was some of it.”

“We just were taking shots and then they were able to get in transition. They made some threes in transition,” Stackhouse recalled. “It’s all like I said. It was probably like a 10-minute stretch there where we got looks at the basket. It just didn’t go in for us. We even got fouled on a three-point shot, going to the line, and weren’t able to convert either. So that’s just kind of snowballed from there.”

Vanderbilt found themselves with a 16-14 lead at the under-twelve media timeout inside Memorial Gymnasium. That was before Auburn blew the doors open with a 27-8 run to end the half. That was enough to give them a 17-point lead at the break at 41-24.

During that stretch, the Tigers shot 50% from the field and three. They also hit nine of ten opportunities from the charity stripe. Around the 9:13 mark, it featured three straight three-pointers in 73 seconds from Chad Baker-Mazara and Aden Holloway as well.

Meanwhile, the Commodores shot 3-16 from the field to end the half at 18.8%. An 0-8 mark from distance was part of that stretch. A 2-6 finish from the free throw line was as well, including all three of the foul shots from a three-pointer by Paul Lewis that Stackhouse referenced.

It really didn’t get any better from there as Auburn controlled the remainder of the game, including their largest lead of 22 points. Vanderbilt outscored the Tigers over the second half but the road team still shot a better field-goal percentage and essentially beat the home team across the board in the box score.

It takes a full forty minutes to win consistently, especially in conference play. That’s why Vanderbilt fell to 5-12, including 0-4 in the SEC, as they were unable to salvage their final half because of what they did over the last ten or minutes in the first.