Mailbag 241: How much do your best players have to defend, really?

This week: Guarding Alabama again, expectations in basketball and football, Byrum Brown, CBM, the Braves and favorite sports movies

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — Welcome back to the mailbag.

In news that would make people happy a decade ago and furious a month ago, Auburn basketball is going to have a chance to play its way into the NCAA Tournament in the final game of the regular season.

It’s just against Alabama. On the road.

And, because it’s a showdown against that particular team in this particular spot, we’ll take the first few questions today to tackle the constant topic with these Tigers: defense.

We’ll also look at an interesting point from the analytics folks about preseason expectations before talking about point guard play, Byrum Brown, Chad Baker-Mazara, subscription stuff and the Atlanta Braves. I also threw in my five favorite sports movies at the end.

Thanks for subscribing. Let’s go.

1 - How important is it for your best player to care on defense?

2 - This past weekend was the traditional “opening weekend” for pro cycling. What’s your favorite non-mainstream sport to watch?

Crow

The first question here is a timely one for a number of reasons. The biggest one, in my mind, is because Auburn is about to play Alabama in a rivalry showdown tomorrow night. If the Tigers pull the upset, they would likely make the NCAA Tournament.

In the first meeting this season, Auburn played about 18 minutes of great defense. Auburn led Alabama by 10 with 2:33 left to go in the first half. Then Alabama went on an 11-2 run, scoring 29.7% of its first-half points in about 10% of the time. The Crimson Tide drilled three 3-pointers in that surge, and it changed the game.

“First 18 minutes, we did a great job of defending them,” Steven Pearl said after that game. “Did a lot of things that we wanted them to do. They were shooting tough, contested 2s — which is kind of what the scouting report was.

“I thought those last two minutes of the first half, when we gave up three 3s, was a huge momentum swing in the game, because that gave them the confidence that they needed to know that they could knock down those shots.”

Later in that postgame press conference, after Auburn allowed 59 second-half points to lose by four, Pearl had this to say:

“We’ve got to guard. Just got to guard. Our best players have got to be better defenders. That can be a challenge. And they can take that in a negative way, or they can take it as me knowing that they’re capable, because they’ve shown the ability to do so. If we’re gonna beat the best teams on our schedule, our best players have to play better defense.”

That Alabama loss would become the second of five straight for Auburn, which has dropped seven of its last nine games to go from firmly inside the NCAA Tournament picture to the outside of it.

And, as we’ve documented here frequently, the difference between winning and losing for the Tigers this season has been their defensive performance — the magic efficiency number of 110.0. When Auburn holds high-major teams to below that number, it’s 9-1. When it’s above that number, it’s 1-13. That’s make-or-break stuff.

This season, Auburn ranks No. 11 nationally on KenPom in opponent-adjusted offensive efficiency and No. 117 in opponent-adjusted defensive efficiency. This team has an elite, battle-tested offense and a largely underachieving defense by high-major standards. That’s a constant source of frustration for Pearl, who was his father’s defensive coordinator over the last several seasons of elite output there.

The challenge has been made, and rather frequently, for Auburn’s best players to play better defense. But how do you measure that? Defense is usually more of a team statistic than individual. Steals, blocks and defensive rebounds don’t tell the full story.