ATLANTA — Jeff Lebo searched for the perfect metaphor to describe what happened to his team Thursday against Vanderbilt in the Southeastern Conference Tournament.

It didn’t take him long.

“It reminds me of playing in my backyard against my 6-year-old son,” said Lebo, Auburn’s basketball coach. “I can score on him whenever I want.

“It was like that out there.”

Like Lebo’s overmatched son, Auburn’s interior defense didn’t have many options against Vanderbilt big man A.J. Ogilvy. It’s not just that AU couldn’t stop him. The Tigers could hardly slow him down.

Ogilvy dominated inside and SEC Player of the Year Shan Foster drilled a half-dozen 3-pointers to lead the Commodores to a 93-82 win in the first round of the SEC Tournament.

“I thought Vanderbilt’s gameplan was fairly simple,” Lebo said. “It’s something we struggle with because of our size: They went inside on us pretty consistently.”

The 6-foot-11 Ogilvy was a matchup nightmare for Auburn forwards Quan Prowell, Frank Tolbert and Lucas Hargrove inside. Ogilvy hit 12 of his 13 shots, almost all layups, and finished with a game-high 27 points.

His dominance in the paint also opened things up on the perimeter for Vandy’s guards.

“We have an advantage inside with A.J.,” Foster said. “Whenever he’s playing the way he did today, it makes it easy for a lot of other guys on this team to make shots.”

Ogilvy wasn’t just wreaking havoc on the scoreboard. His constant pressure on Auburn’s interior defense knocked Prowell out of the game: The senior forward, AU’s leading scorer this season, fouled out in 11 minutes, having scored just 8 points.

Prowell’s replacements, the 6-foot-6 Hargrove and the 6-foot-4 Tolbert, had even more trouble with Ogilvy. But the slender duo were the only backup plan AU’s undersized roster had.

“When Quan goes out, our whole front line is gone,” Lebo said. “We had no subs at that point.”

Even before Prowell fouled out, Auburn (14-16) was having trouble stopping the Commodores. Vandy (26-6) shot 76 percent from the field in the first half and led by as many as 13 before halftime.

Foster, who finished with 26 points for Vanderbilt, was 6-for-9 from 3-point range.

That was disheartening for Auburn, which found itself facing a major deficit despite playing well on offense. The Tigers shot 50 percent from the field in the first half and 47.5 percent in the game.

“We were making shots and they were making shots,” said Tolbert, who finished with 16 points. “We felt like they weren’t going to be hitting them like that the whole game, but it seemed like they did.”

Auburn cut the lead to 6 on a Tolbert jumper with 12 minutes to play. But Vanderbilt reeled off a 12-3 run to put the game out of reach.

Auburn guard Rasheem Barrett, an Atlanta native, scored 20 points, his best output in more than a month. But Barrett wasn’t satisfied.

“There’s never satisfaction in losing,” he said. “I played a pretty well-rounded game, but I didn’t do good enough, and we didn’t do good enough as a team.”

Despite this season’s struggles, Auburn is still technically eligible for a taste of the postseason. An Auburn spokesman said the school had been contacted by a representative of the College Basketball Invitational, a 16-team postseason tournament for teams left out of the NCAA Tournament.

Auburn is ineligible for a spot in the Postseason NIT, which only accepts teams with winning records. The CBI, which competes with the NIT, accepts teams with losing records, but AU is likely to be a long shot for a berth.

If the Tigers don’t make the CBI field, Thursday’s loss marked an end to the AU careers of Tolbert and Prowell. Both seniors sacrificed their bodies this season, defending far bigger SEC post players.

Tolbert, the only player remaining from Lebo’s first Auburn team, has no regrets.

“My time here was great,” he said. “Even though it didn’t end up like I wanted it to, I had a lot of great times here.”

Prowell agreed.

“Just being around the fellas and my coaches — I love them like they were my true family,” he said.

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