Mailbag 236: How can Auburn basketball get back on track?

This week: Steven Pearl, NCAA Tournament chances, effort level, Byrum Brown, Alex Golesh's aggressiveness and fixing the calendar

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — Welcome back to the ‘bag at the end of another wild week on the Plains.

I’m still working through a backlog of questions from last week, so you might not see all of them in here. But, if they were not exactly time-sensitive, they’ll get in at some point. You haven’t been forgotten.

This week, we’re back to the ups and downs of the roller coaster that is Auburn men’s basketball this season and making sense of what needs to happen next. We’ll also go deep on some questions regarding this reloading Auburn football roster and the future of college football in general.

Thanks to everyone for continuing to support The Observer. Next week will be another wild one with two road basketball games and more football movement. We couldn’t do any of it without y’all.

Let’s go.

This basketball season seems to be teetering on the edge of disaster. I think the next few games will go a long way in determining how the season goes. Lose them, and the season totally implodes. Win them, and the tournament is still in reach.

How does Steven get this team back to where it needs to be? Lack of discipline appears to be a big problem. The Arkansas game seems to be an outlier and not the norm, unfortunately.

My biggest worry is that this season ends up a disaster and everyone heads for the doors. We then have to do another reset for the wrong reasons.

Sparky

That’s the multimillion dollar question for Steven Pearl, and it’s his first big challenge as a head coach. It starts with him finding a way to push the right buttons and get the effort level Auburn played with against Arkansas out of his players every single night.

I think some of that inconsistency is just natural with a team that has so many new players. But, to be honest, you’re more than halfway done with the regular season and have already been through a lot of tests together. When I asked Pearl about that Friday, he was pretty clear about what his expectations are:

“We’ve sat here and talked about how hard of a schedule we’ve played,” Pearl said. “We’ve played more Quad 1 games than anyone in college basketball up to this point. We have the 13th-most Quad 1 wins in college basketball, second-most in the league with three. We can’t keep using that as a crutch and an excuse as to why we’re not winning games. We played that schedule so we can go on the road at Missouri and be excited about playing and play better. It was no surprise that we were going to get their best shot in front of a sold-out crowd and with elevated play from them.

“We just didn’t have the same pop that we did against Arkansas, or really that we did in the first three games. I don’t understand why. ... If they’re capable of beating Florida at home, I don’t understand how we’re not excited about playing that game. We’ve got to make that adjustment, we’ve got to flip that switch on every single night. What we do doesn’t work unless we fly around and play really, really hard.”

If Auburn can do that and play like it did against Arkansas — and against St. John’s and NC State, which are the other two Quad 1 wins this season — then it has an opportunity to pick up enough quality results the rest of the way to make the dance. The SEC has more parity in it this season than usual. Anybody can get beaten by anybody. You have to take it a game at a time, but the effort is a non-negotiable.

Auburn absolutely needs a win Saturday against South Carolina because of how damaging a loss could be in this spot, and then it could really use a victory Tuesday at Ole Miss to get the road game monkey off its back. From there, you try to survive the toughest stretch of your season without taking too many hits, then pick up momentum with a more favorable finish before March.

This is still a team projected to make the NCAA Tournament because of its resume to this point, because Quad 1 losses don’t really hurt you at all. But the margins are thinner than usual, which means this is going to be a roller coaster ride to the end.

Auburn has faced a ton of adversity this season, and a lot of it has been self-inflicted. That has to change, and it has to change quickly.

“We’ve got to stop having conversations,” Pearl said. “We’ve got to be more about action.”

Ain’t that the truth.

Steven Pearl was the “defensive coordinator” prior to being head coach.

I know you’ve said Bruce let his assistants run practices a lot, but how much of Steven’s having to focus on being the head coach now rather than focusing mainly on defense and providing his scouting reports affected the defensive play?

Or do you think it’s really been an issue at all, since most of the staff is still the same as before?

Walt

Here’s a take that I don’t expect everybody to agree with: I don't think Auburn would be that different in a spot right now if Bruce Pearl was still the head coach.