I won't say "I told you so," because this was ultimately still a loss, albeit one that should've been a win over the #1 ranked team in the country. And Georgia is still a major work in progress.
Pearl is not a genius tactician. Crean is not a know-nothing clown. Mark Fox can obviously coach just fine at this level. Archie Miller didn't lose all basketball knowledge when he moved from Dayton to Bloomington. Fred Hoiberg possesses the skills to excel at Iowa St and in the NBA. Nebraska has proven to be a major uphill battle, however. Was Hoiberg's past success a mirage? We could come up with dozens of other recent or current examples. The margins are not nearly as wide as people perceive them to be. However, school history, inherited roster, state of the conference, recruiting competition, injuries, luck, timing, etc. all play significant roles in determining relative success or failure. In most cases, you cannot expect something to magically change and remain constant in a couple of years. Progress isn't always linear.
Monk was nice to give Crean credit for maintaining belief among the squad. The guys believed that they could beat Auburn. Despite being shorthanded all season and constantly undersized, they did almost everything well enough to beat the #1 team in the country. Georgia severely outplayed Auburn in the second half. The crowd and sudden game pressure undoubtedly helped spook Auburn a bit, but it was by far Georgia's most communicative and cohesive defensive effort of the season. The obvious question is why did it take Auburn coming in to elicit that kind of effort? Granted, it's impossible to make up for losing your two most experienced, strongest bodies basically from the get-go. But that kind of effort is what it takes.
I'm sure that Pearl wanted to get Smith and Kessler more touches, but a combination of Georgia's defensive activity and KD wanting to do it himself almost (should've) cost Auburn the game. Despite scoring 20, I didn't think that KD was very good.
Too bad. It would've been a really nice victory for the program.