Mailbag 210: What about Auburn basketball's new-look... defense?

This week: Rotations, the value of coaching, CFP dreams, quarterback highlights, JHS renovations, big meals and movie quotes

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — Welcome back to the mailbag. We’ve got a lot to get to this week for both Auburn basketball and Auburn football — and we’re gearing up for another Auburn baseball, subscribers-only podcast with our pal Adam Cole for tomorrow.

I’ve often said how much I enjoy the fact that Observer readers and listeners stay this engaged through the offseason, especially during the times where there isn’t much news. It means a lot that y’all are still subscribing and still interacting.

That comes out the most in the mailbag, and I’m excited that my bit of asking readers a question to answer each week has led to some suggestions. (That also goes for the Quadserver/Top Four/Favorite Four/Whatever Dan Wants To Call It This Week segment on the podcast.)

This week’s question came to us a little while back from Steve: What’s a movie quote you work into a conversation whenever you can? Steve’s personal pick was a great one, from The Princess Bride: "I do not think that means what you think that means.”

So let’s dive into your questions about the Tigers in both sports, along with some fun topics towards the end and a whole lot of movie quotes. As someone who constantly makes references to pop culture in everyday life, this is made for me.

Let’s go.

Talk about how you see this team in a Pearl defense. Not many people are talking about the new guys’ defensive abilities. Auburn won several games last year by putting people in jail for long stretches!

“You serious, Clark?”

Scott

That’s the million dollar question for Auburn basketball heading into next season. It’s easy to see that the Tigers’ renovated roster is full of scorers, as the non-high schoolers alone averaged more than 120 combined points per game for their respective teams last season. Those weren’t all at high-major — or even Division I — programs, but there’s a lot of obvious offensive firepower available.

On defense? Bruce Pearl has said he’s interested in seeing how that works out.

“It's going to be interesting to see how we defend,” Pearl said last month. “Dylan Cardwell was the best defender on the floor. Johni (Broome) was able to guard multiple positions. Chad Baker-Mazara was long and could really guard. Denver (Jones) was the best on-ball defender. Miles Kelly was long.

“We had a really good defensive team. That's where our bread was buttered. So that's probably going to be our biggest challenge.”

Admittedly, it’s tough to project how a new-look roster is going to defend. It’s easier to see how a player’s skill set works on the offensive end of the floor than it is on the defensive end, because so much of defense comes down to all five players working well together. And, without grinding a bunch of game film, it’s tough to see just how effective a player is at on-ball or off-ball defending.

Standard defensive stats can also get wonky. Jones was an elite on-ball defender, but he had the worst defensive rating and the second-lowest defensive box plus/minus on the team. However, his on/off defensive rating (-10.3) led the Tigers, and the consistently rough scoring performances for other teams’ top guards were direct results of his defense. And, obviously, those stats aren’t widely available in all leagues.

There’s also the fact that some of these transfers just weren’t on good team defenses last season. UCF, where Keyshawn Hall played, was No. 238 nationally in raw defensive rating. Mississippi State, where KeShawn Murphy played, was middle-of-the-road at No. 158. Abdul Bashir played in a JUCO conference where scoring in the triple digits was the norm. Elyjah Freeman played in some absolute D-II shootouts.

What you can do, for the most part, is look at defensive traits and see how they might work if these players were to get locked into the way Auburn plays. It’s a learning process. It can also be a grind, affecting players’ offensive games in the meantime. But you know how Pearl views defense, right?

Let’s go through each of Auburn’s players on the 2025-26 roster, and I’ll give some quick thoughts on the defensive potential of each of them: