Everything Bruce Pearl said after Auburn's road loss at Appalachian State

Bruce Pearl knew Auburn's trip to Appalachian State would challenge his new team, and it certainly did that and more. In the Tigers' first road game of the season, they started strong, leading 17-8, but it was mostly bad from there, going into halftime down two and ultimately losing by five to the Mountaineers. "They have a chance to have a really good team," Pearl said. "We knew this would be like playing a lower-to-middle half SEC team, so equate them with teams that will fill up in the middle of our league. We felt like it was a road game we could get. Give them all the credit. Their guards lined us up and drove us and that was an issue until late in the game when we went to a zone. "When you miss 10 free throws and make nine, and you miss 24 threes and make three, that's not going to win many games. Some of that was defense, but a lot of it was open shots. We had 20 offensive rebounds, but missed a lot of shots inside that didn't go down. You have to make free throws and make open shots. We didn't do that and we got beat." More from Pearl inside...