Film Room: How Auburn's two-center lineup made a huge difference at UGA
Bruce Pearl decided to play Johni Broome and Dylan Cardwell together for the first time in a while. It might have been the best call of the night.
C Johni Broome (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
It had been 78 days since Auburn last played Johni Broome and Dylan Cardwell on the floor at the same time.
The last time it had happened was the only time it had happened this season. For 90 seconds of game time, midway through the first half of Auburn’s blowout win over Indiana in Atlanta, the Tigers had both of their centers in the same lineup.
It was a move born out of necessity, as both power forwards Jaylin Williams and Chaney Johnson were in early foul trouble. Auburn ran two quick stints of Broome and Cardwell together, and those brief runs combined for a +4 in plus/minus.
The Tigers didn’t go back to it in the second half, and they didn’t go back to it for the next 720 minutes — that is, the next 18 games.
For the vast majority of the season, Auburn’s frontcourt strategy was clear: Broome would get 24 to 25 minutes per game at center, while Cardwell would get the remaining 15 to 16. Williams and Johnson would have a similar arrangement at power forward.
The strategy worked quite well. Broome turned into one of the biggest stat-sheet stuffers in all of college basketball. Williams, on most nights, would channel his fifth-year experience into being one of the most efficient scorers anywhere. Cardwell and Johnson would mostly star in an all-bench lineup that is still one of the best five-man units in the country.
But Auburn didn’t have that luxury Saturday night in its return visit to the state of Georgia. Williams suffered a knee injury against Kentucky and is sidelined not permanently, yet indefinitely. The Tigers would no longer have the Noah’s Ark-like “two of everything” depth chart up front, causing Bruce Pearl and his staff to make adjustments all across the rotation.
Johnson plugged into the starting lineup in place of Williams. He was simply excellent in his first career start at the Division I level, scoring a season-high 16 points and adding four rebounds with zero turnovers in 26 minutes of Auburn’s 97-76 win over Georgia.
Obviously, Johnson couldn’t play all 40 minutes at power forward. So, for the remaining 14 minutes, the Tigers tried several different looks.
The main one was playing Broome and Cardwell together again. And, in 10:35 of action, Auburn out-scored Georgia by 10 points.
The duo had a net rating of +56.0. Auburn had an offensive effective field goal percentage of 68.8% and a defensive effective field goal percentage of 31.3% when they were on the floor together.
Both of those numbers are truly elite in Division I basketball for any length of time, as were the Tigers’ 57.1% offensive rebounding rate and 80% defensive rebounding rate with the two centers.
To put it another way, Auburn rebounded more than half of its own misses when Broome and Cardwell played together — and four out of every five Georgia misses.
While it would have made sense for Auburn to go with two centers against a Georgia team trying to overcompensate for its lack of interior strength with a bigger-than-usual lineup, Pearl’s reasoning behind the move was much simpler.
“I actually played Johni and Dylan together, which had nothing to do with the fact that Georgia plays big-big,” Pearl said. “But it's just putting my best players on the floor.”
And it wasn’t just that Auburn averaged being a point per minute better than Georgia with Broome and Cardwell on the floor together. It was the timing of when the Tigers went to the look.
Auburn played the double-center lineup several times, but only two of them were extended runs: From the 16:44 mark to the 15:18 mark in the first half, and from the 11:56 mark to the 7:38 mark in the second half. The rest of the time played together were short, back-and-forth rotations for a possession or two at a time, as the Tigers were trying to handle early foul trouble.
In that first-half run, Auburn went from a 2-point lead over Georgia to an 8-point lead. The Tigers used that push to remain in comfortable control of the opening 20 minutes, which is something that elite opponents such as Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky hadn’t done in their trips to Athens this season.
In that second-half run, Auburn went from a 3-point lead over a Georgia team on a 10-2 run to a 9-point lead. If it wasn’t for an injury substitution for Cardwell on what appeared to be a cramp, the duo’s numbers could have been even better, as Auburn’s lead soared all the way to 15 just a minute later.
Auburn took command of the first half with the double-center lineup, and it ended Georgia’s comeback hopes in the second half with the same look.
While the standout play of Chad Baker-Mazara, the breakout shooting of Aden Holloway and the bench contributions from K.D. Johnson and Lior Berman deserve a lot of attention after Auburn’s win, Pearl’s decision to roll with a barely used two-center look might be the most significant development of the game.
On both ends of the floor, Broome and Cardwell showcased their season-long individual development, as the two centers have become truly modern big men under Pearl and his staff this season.
They’ve been foundational to both a more dangerous, Euro-inspired offensive system and an elite defense that prides itself on having everyone being able to defend anyone at any time.