The home crowd at Auburn’s Neville Arena was given plenty to cheer about Saturday night.

To kick things off, former Auburn and Oregon quarterback Bo Nix was shown on the jumbotron and received a warm ovation from he and his father’s former university.

Then Auburn’s public address announcer broke the news to Auburn fans that Aubie the Tiger collected his 11th national title at the UCA National Championships in Orlando just before tipoff.

Bruce Pearl and No. 16 Auburn’s ninth straight win by double digits? That was just the icing on the cake Saturday as Auburn beat LSU 93-78, giving the Bayou Bengals their first conference loss, while the Auburn Tigers improved to 3-0 in conference play and 14-2 on the year.

Once again, Auburn bounces back after tough shooting performance

Auburn went 5-for-22 from beyond the arc against Texas A&M on Tuesday — a 22% deep-shooting performance well below Auburn’s 34% average coming into the night.

Against the Aggies, Auburn had its worst three-point shooting effort since its loss at Appalachian State on Dec. 3, when Auburn was good from beyond the arc just 11% of the time. The next time out, Auburn was good from three 48% of the time in its win over Indiana.

And just like it did after their loss to App State, Auburn was quick to snap their shooting slump Saturday evening.

In just one half of play against LSU, Auburn sank seven three pointers, which was two more than it tallied in the entire game against Texas A&M. Auburn did so on a 50% three-point effort in the first half as freshman Aden Holloway got things off to a red-hot start with a pair of makes in the first two and a half minutes.

Auburn finished the night with 10 makes from beyond the arc with Chad Baker-Mazara and Aden Holloway each hitting a trio of three pointers.

Baker-Mazara finished the night with a team-high 19 points.

Assist/Turnover ratio continues to favor Auburn

Coming into Saturday evening’s matchup, Auburn ranked No. 6 in the country in assist/turnover ratio with a ratio of 1.84 as the Tigers had tallied 281 assists to their 153 turnovers.

And against LSU, Auburn stayed par with the course as it forced LSU to commit 17 turnovers — nearly four more than LSU’s season average of 13.3 turnovers per game. Of LSU’s turnovers, all but one came as a result of an Auburn steal.

For just the third time this season, Auburn recorded double-digit steals, finishing with 16 on the night — a season high for the Tigers. Auburn’s leading pocket-picker was Baker-Mazara, who finished the game with six steals.

Auburn scored 26 points on turnovers against LSU.

Meanwhile, Auburn found continued success dishing the basketball as it finished the evening with 20 assists to LSU’s 12 assists.

Auburn stifles LSU’s leading scorer

Pearl gushed about LSU guard Jalen Cook during his press conference Thursday, even admitting to giving Cook a look when he entered the transfer portal the first time.

“Just knew what a great player he was,” Pearl said of Cook. “We had him evaluated as any guard in the portal.”

And coming into Saturday night’s game, Cook was backing it up after having just become eligible to play following the passage of new legislation allowing multi-time transfers to play without sitting out a year.

Through his first five games back, Cook was averaging 16.8 points per game and was coming off a monster, 28-point game against Vanderbilt.

Cook’s game against Auburn, however, was far less eventful as he was held to just seven points and saw very limited action against in the second half of Saturday’s game. It’s unclear if Cook suffered any kind of injury during Saturday’s loss.

With Cook under wraps, LSU was forced to lean on fifth-year guards Trae Hannibal and Jordan Wright, who both finished with 18 points.