Auburn men’s basketball suffered its first Southeastern Conference loss of the season Saturday, falling 90-81 to Florida at home and snapping a 14-game winning streak.

Here’s everything head coach Bruce Pearl had to say after the loss:

Opening statement

“I’ll start off by congratulating Florida on a great, great victory, great game plan. I thought they, being down Martin, they really rallied. And Clayton was tremendous. Our gameplan defensively was to try to get the ball out of his hands. And after the first couple possessions, you would never know that that was our game plan.

We did it the first couple of possessions and then we stopped doing it. Kind of sensed this was about to happen at any point. We have had greater effort, energy, or at least match the effort, energy of every team we played. I knew that we were due for some. We were due for a letdown.

You know, again, give Florida credit. I think, understand if I would redo a few things, I don’t know that I made or had our team understand how important this game was to Florida in the sense that Florida could be a Final Four team. If they lose this game, they’re four games behind us in the league. Alright? Now they’re only two and they’re still in it.

I mean, they just came in here like they had to win it. That’s how they played every possession. They played harder. They played better. They played more desperately. We did not look like the number one team in the country. We didn’t act like the number one team in the country. We didn’t prepare like it. And as a result, we got beat.”

On moving on and preparing for the next game

“Practice at two o’clock tomorrow. Practice at two o’clock tomorrow. They lift at one. I’ll go home tonight, start working on a little bit of Vanderbilt, probably look at this a little bit, and just keep doing what we do, you know. You gotta embrace the grind.

There’s no question it’s a grind. It’s a grind for everybody. We go to Vanderbilt where they’ve only lost once at home. And they’ve beaten Kentucky, and they just beat Texas today, and they’ve beaten Tennessee. So, we know that that’s gonna be a tough place to win.”

On Florida’s 22 assists

“They did a great job of making plays out of their ball screen. They did a great job of throwing it out of the ball screen. They were properly spaced. We had a game plan that we thought was going to be effective. It wasn’t. We kept on trying to get the guys to execute that game plan instead of maybe we could have made some adjustments.

But the way they played out of the ball screen and shared the ball and spaced, and they banged a bunch of shots. I mean, they banged a bunch of shots. And their bench really, really stepped up for them. I mean, really stepped up for them.

We missed a lot of shots inside, a lot of two-point baskets. We’ll go back and look at it and go, ‘Golly.’ In a big game, you’ve gotta make them.”

On Denver Jones’ performance

I would have to look at the stat sheet to recognize that that’s what it was. I did. I looked at it earlier and went, ‘Wow.’ I didn’t realize Denver didn’t score, didn’t make a bucket. I think that there was a little level of a fatigue with it. I do. Because he’d been just terrific. So I’m not worried about Denver.

On whether he was surprised by how Florida’s frontcourt played

No. No. That’s how they played last year at Florida. Don’t forget this team had us down 25 last year at Florida. So it was very much the same. They handed it to us down there and they handed it to us again. We were able to get them in the finals of the SEC tournament, but they handed it to us. And they were more physical, they were more aggressive. And as a result, they were more successful.

On how the team we’ll respond to adversity

We’ll see you tomorrow at two o’clock

On what made it difficult to guard Walter Clayton Jr.

It required multiple effort. It just required multiple effort, and we just didn’t give it.

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m