Mailbag 190: How effective is Auburn's double-big starting 5?

This week: Looking ahead to Maui, point guards, bucket list arenas, Hugh Freeze, the 2024 offense, Jarquez Hunter and The Rizzler

C Dylan Cardwell (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — Welcome back to the Observer Mailbag.

We’ve got another massive mailbag for both basketball and football, and I’m already limited on the space in these emails. So, let’s take care of some business first.

Since I’ll be in Maui next week and traveling back on Thursday and Friday in order to make it to the Iron Bowl on Saturday, we won’t have a mailbag next week. Enjoy Thanksgiving with your family and friends.

Second: We’ll have a premium podcast previewing the Auburn-Texas A&M football game and talking some more basketball out later today. We just had to wait for Dan to get all the way out to Alaska, so this should be a memorable episode.

Thanks as always for supporting The Auburn Observer and making it so that we can travel the entire country — even the states that don’t touch the mainland — to cover all things Auburn basketball and Auburn football for you. Let’s go.

It seems as though the double-big lineups have been subpar. Do you have data on the results the Cardwell-Broome lineups have yielded in aggregate? 

Lucas

So far this season, Bruce Pearl has stuck to a starting lineup that includes both Johni Broome and Dylan Cardwell.

What’s interesting is that, outside of a brief rotation with it in the Houston game, Auburn hasn’t gone back to the double-big look after the start of both halves — playing either Broome or Cardwell at center the rest of the way.

Why has Auburn started both Broome and Cardwell this season? Let’s go back to what Pearl said about it after the North Alabama win this week:

“A lot of that is just earned. Certainly I would say that Chaney Johnson has demonstrated that he certainly could start and deserves to start. You know, I think that Tahaad Pettiford certainly could be a guy that could be a starter. So I don’t know that that the starting lineup will be the same always. But, right now, those are the five that have earned the right to be out there first.”

The numbers say that Auburn’s double-big lineup has been strong so far this season, but it hasn’t been consistently strong. For almost every red-hot start to a half we’ve seen, the Tigers have had lackluster ones — like in the first half against UNA or the second half against Kent State.

According to CBB Analytics, Auburn has had just five different five-man lineups play at least five minutes together. The newer starting lineup of Denver Jones, Miles Kelly, Chad Baker-Mazara, Broome and Cardwell has played the most (16) and has been +12 in plus/minus. The former starting lineup of JP Pegues, Jones, Baker-Mazara, Broome and Cardwell was even better, sitting at +15 in 11 minutes.

Statistically, the two double-big starting lineups were virtually identical in terms of offensive output. Defensively, the one with Pegues was excellent — it had a 39.2 defensive rating and standout marks in rebounding and avoiding fouls — but that could be a product of small sample sizes and matchups.

Auburn’s most complete lineup this season, by far, has been the group of Pettiford, Jones, Kelly, Johnson and Broome. In 10 minutes together, they’ve had a plus/minus of +19. Their net rating is an absurd +140.2, with a 199.2 offensive rating and a 59.0 defensive rating. Plugging Baker-Mazara in for Kelly in that group — the lineup that finished the Houston game — makes the Tigers a little better on offense but not quite as good on defense.

So far this season, Auburn has been at its best defensively when Broome and Cardwell have played together (74.3 defensive rating) than when it’s just one of them (89.9 for Broome, 94.6 for Cardwell). And Broome, obviously, is the much better offensive weapon.

In years past, we’ve seen Auburn start games with a defense-first mindset. We’ve also heard on countless occasions from Pearl about how who starts isn’t as important as who finishes. The Pettiford-Jones-CBM/Kelly-Johnson-Broome lineup has been the go-to there, and the numbers back that up.

Pearl sounds very open to changing up his starting lineup throughout the season. So far, he’s leaned more towards defense by essentially starting Cardwell over Johnson and then going to a more traditional center rotation. (And it’s worth noting that Johnson’s defensive numbers aren’t that far behind Cardwell’s.) That may shift in the future, much like Pettiford might climb into the starting lineup at some point.

If Auburn is going to stick to the Broome-Cardwell look in the starting frontcourt longterm, it will probably have to produce some more consistent results. When it’s on, it’s a torture chamber on defense. But it needs to be that way the vast majority of the time in order to justify leaving better offensive options on the bench to start.

PG/SG Tahaad Pettiford (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

Last time we played a great defense, we beat Houston by 5 largely because Johni and Tahaad took over the 2nd half. I’ve seen Johni take over games many times, but Tahaad’s performance feels a little less repeatable (I think he was like 60% from 3 that night). And even with all that, the margin of victory was just 5 points.

I know Tahaad specifically doesn’t have to be the guy to do it, but to beat another great defense in Iowa State, do you feel like we have to hope for another better-than-normal performance from a player besides Johni?

Daniel

I hear you, but let me spin the scenario from the Houston game in a different way…