Auburn basketball moved past Alabama State after a 20-point victory in its Round of 64 game Thursday afternoon.

With Creighton next on the Tigers bracket, Auburn coach Bruce Pearl believes the Tigers performance against the Hornets would not have been enough to outlast the Blue Jays.

“I think the other thing too, our teams always play with great effort and energy, you have to, or our system doesn’t really work, and I just think we didn’t tonight,” Bruce Pearl said postgame Thursday.

The Tigers shot 45% from the floor and 31% from beyond the arc, behind Miles Kelly seven made 3-pointers.

Kelly torched the Hornets for 23 points and Tahaad Pettiford added 16 points in their NCAA tournament debuts. Johni Broome and Chaney Johnson combined for 27 points as Broome added another double-double to his career count.

However, Auburn was slopy with the ball at times finishing the game with 12 turnovers. Alabama State had a game-high 10 steals and led the contest in fastbreak points.

“No, we won’t beat Creighton playing the way we played tonight. We can play better. We know we can tighten things up. But that’s the thing about the tournament, we will absolutely get to the next game,” Pearl said.

“One of the things that we’ll do, even in a short period of time, we’re going to look at it a little bit and go, okay, this is how it’s going to be done on Saturday against a much better, much bigger, much different kind of a basketball team.”

The Blue Jays shot 57% from the floor connecting on 11 3-pointers in their 89-75 victory over Louisville. Creighton scored 36 points from inside the paint and were carried by a hot shooting day from Jamiya Neal’s 29 points and 12 rebounds.

Ryan Kalkbrenner has been the anchor of this Creighton squad averaging 19.4 points and 8.8 rebounds this year. He’s shooting 65.5% from the floor leading the Blue Jays in almost every category.

Kalkbrenner finished with 14 points and six rebounds against Louisville, setting up an elite frontcourt matchup with the Auburn Bigs.

Tipoff for the contest is set for 6:10 p.m. and the game will be televised on TBS/TruTV. The winner will advance to the Sweet 16 round in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jerry Humphrey III covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Jerryhump3 or email him at [email protected].