Film Room: Problems (and potential) of Auburn's defense in Game 1
Auburn struggled on defense more than usual with its new-look roster vs. Bethune-Cookman. Let's take a closer look.
Here’s a debut piece from resident ball knower Henry Patton, who has covered Auburn basketball for the Opelika-Auburn News and AuburnSports.com already in his young sportswriting career. You may see Henry’s byline pop up here from time to time at The Observer in the coming weeks as he assists (basketball term) us with some words on Steven Pearl’s Tigers. Enjoy.
Defense was always going to be a work in progress for what is almost an entirely brand-new Auburn basketball roster.
Auburn’s opener on Monday showed exactly that, as the Tigers finished with a team defensive rating of 110.2 and had to scrap their way to a win over Bethune-Cookman.
For reference, 110.2 is the worst defensive rating Auburn has posted in a regular-season game against a mid-major opponent since December 2020.
So exactly how did this happen? Because, even with all of the context and nuance of Auburn having a new-look roster, that’s an unacceptable number.
“I thought they made some tough shots, but that’s an NCAA Tournament team,” Auburn head coach Steven Pearl said Tuesday. “They played incredibly well, and we found a way to obviously hang in there. But we obviously understand that we’ve got a lot to improve on, especially on the defensive end.”
In this Film Room, let’s take a closer look at Auburn’s defense from the overtime win over Bethune-Cookman — what went wrong for the Tigers and why there’s some real potential on that end of the floor.
On-court chemistry issues
As it has been well-documented at this point, Tahaad Pettiford is the only returning rotation player for Auburn basketball this season.
Combined with the fact that Auburn runs a switch-heavy, complex defense that takes some time to learn, there appeared to be quite a few communication issues Monday.
Before getting into the clips, it needs to be said that there’s no way for us to know each player’s specific assignment on a play-by-play basis. So, because of this, it’s not totally fair to point out who may or may not be in the wrong, simply because we don’t have the information to make that claim with 100% certainty.
Modern defenses are too complex to assign blame without knowing the scouting report. And Auburn, as both Pearls have stated over the years, is a scout-heavy team.
Let’s use this play as an example. It starts with a ball screen involving Kevin Overton and Filip Jović. Overton goes over the screen, while Jovic comes up to passively blitz the ball-handler, Arterio Morris.
That allows Morris to find the roller, and because Keyshawn Hall doesn’t rotate over, it’s an easy two points for Bethune-Cookman.
It’d be unfair for me to assign blame to Jović because, for all I know, he did exactly as he was told. Hall should have rotated earlier. But the same could be true, vice-versa.
Regardless of who’s at fault, that sequence shows Auburn’s lack of chemistry to this point defensively. Keep that in mind as we move along.