Johni Broome was displeased with himself after Auburn’s trip to Georgia earlier this season.

The transfer big man came up huge for the Tigers, albeit in a losing effort — 22 points (a season high to that point) and 12 rebounds on the road in his second SEC game — but he also committed a season-high four turnovers while struggling with aggressive double-teams in the post.

“I was a little bit upset about that because it was just careless plays, not taking care of the basketball to win the games,” Broome said.

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Broome and frontcourt mate Jaylin Williams know they’ll have to handle those double-teams better this time around when No. 25 Auburn hosts Georgia on Wednesday at Neville Arena (6 p.m. on SEC Network), both to help open things up for the Tigers’ guards and because Bruce Pearl believes his team has a distinct advantage on the interior against the Bulldogs.

Broome won his one-on-one matchup with Bulldogs big man Braelen Bridges (four points on 2-of-8 shooting, with four rebounds) in the first meeting between the two teams, even if Williams didn’t have his best performance. Williams had five points on 1-of-9 shooting to go with seven rebounds and four assists, and while he did not commit a turnover, his counterpart at the four, Matthew-Alexander Moncrieffe, had nine points, nine rebounds and three assists for Georgia.

“We have an advantage inside,” Pearl said Tuesday. “The real challenge is really, quite frankly, just the way the game is called. You look at the NBA, there’s just no more inside game in the NBA. There’s no more back to the basket, there’s no more post-up players. Everything is five-out, everything is spread… And yet, we’re going to still pound that ball inside to Johni, we’re going to pound that ball inside to Jaylin.”

It’s easy to see why Pearl wants to play through those two. Broome and Williams aren’t exactly Jabari Smith and Walker Kessler, but Auburn’s frontcourt duo has played well of late and been overall consistent for much of the season. Broome has scored in double figures in all but four of the Tigers’ game this season while averaging 13.4 points and 8.5 rebounds per game. Since a two-game stretch when he was dealing with a sprained toe, he has responded over the last three games, averaging 19.3 points on 60.1 percent shooting, 8.3 boards and 3.3 blocks per game.

Williams, meanwhile, has scored in double figures in five of Auburn’s last six games. During that stretch, he’s averaging 14.2 points on 53.9 percent shooting, 5.2 rebounds and three assists per game. The only game in which he didn’t score in double figures during that stretch was last week against Texas A&M, when he had eight points on 3-of-5 shooting but dished out a season-high seven assists.

“Our offense has a lot of diversity in it,” Broome said. “We have really good guards who can make plays. Obviously our frontcourt with me, Jaylin and Dylan (Cardwell) is very dynamic, very powerful, dominant. Coaches and the players kind of look to get us the ball to get us going, to kind of build off of that. They just rely on us to make plays.”

Auburn will need Broome and Williams to maintain their strong play and win their head-to-head matchups for the Tigers to bounce back from back-to-back losses to Texas A&M and West Virginia, and the team will certainly need them to deftly handle whatever Mike White’s Bulldogs throw at them Wednesday night.

“(We) just have to be able to feel the pressure and make the simple play instead of making the hard pass, getting off of it and finishing on the backside,” Broome said.

It could go a long way toward making things easier for Auburn’s guards and helping the team get back on track as the final month of the regular season gets underway.

“We’re playing better now than we did (when) we were there,” Pearl said. “That’s a good thing. I look at that second game in the SEC…. We’re playing better than we were, but in some ways, they are too. So, just simply take it one at a time and don’t look at what’s ahead.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.