Film Room: Why Auburn is at its best from 3 since the Final Four run
The Tigers have four qualified players shooting 40% or better on 3s, with a fifth close behind. That's never happened at Auburn before.
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — The Auburn men’s basketball program might have had its initial breakthrough in 2018 with its surprise SEC championship season, but the run that truly put Bruce Pearl and his team on the map nationally came a year later.
A team led by Jared Harper, Bryce Brown and Chuma Okeke was 7-7 in the SEC after getting pummeled in Rupp Arena. Then the Tigers won four straight close games to end the regular season, followed by four more victories in four days to win the SEC Tournament. That was followed by another four-win set — including wins over Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky — to get Auburn to the Final Four for the first time ever.
That 2019 surge was defined by a single style: Burying opponents in an avalanche of 3-pointers and selling out for turnovers. Auburn was No. 208 nationally in average height. The tallest of its top seven players in minutes played was 6-foot-8. This was modern small ball personified, with the Tigers shooting a 3 only nearly half of their attempts from the field and hitting a strong 38.1% of them.
Six years later, and Pearl’s program looks very different. Auburn has won two more SEC titles since then — a regular-season crown and a tournament championship — and has made it to three straight NCAA Tournaments. Analytically, the Tigers had one of the best teams in the country in two of the last three seasons.
And then there’s the current team, which is on pace to have the best adjusted net rating in the history of KenPom. Auburn is now top-40 nationally in average height, led by an All-American center in Johni Broome who is also the current frontrunner for National Player of the Year. The Tigers boast a dominant frontcourt, and their backcourt has gotten bigger over the years: Only one regular rotation player is shorter than 6-foot-4, a far cry from the small-ball days.
But that Final Four run and this current analytics monster have one clear thing in common: They love to cash in from 3-point range.
Through 14 games, Auburn is shooting 37.7% from deep as a team. That ranks 39th nationally in Division I basketball, and it’s the second-best mark in the SEC. (The No. 1 spot goes to Texas, which Auburn will play Tuesday night in its first road league game.)
Being just 0.4% lower than the Final Four team that was primarily known to be deadly from beyond the arc says a lot. And here’s the major difference: In 2019, Auburn ranked 103rd nationally in 2-point field goal percentage.
Behind the likes of Broome and Chaney Johnson, Auburn is currently 4th in the country in that category. The Tigers are pairing an elite inside game with nearly as good of an outside game.
That’s what makes Auburn truly scary as an offense, and it’s why it leads all of college basketball in offensive rating. Prioritizing your defense around slowing down Broome — who has had nine 20-point games already this season — can leave yourself exposed on the perimeter.
“Johni Broome, obviously, is a load down there,” Pearl said Saturday, after Auburn’s 84-68 win over Missouri. “And he's so unselfish. With our shooters, you're kind of darned if you do, darned if you don't. If you play him 1-on-1, he's going to take advantage of you. If you go down and get him, he's going to kick it out, and we're going to beat you from 3. That's kind of been a good combination.”
This is a formula that Auburn leaned on last season and upgraded it this season. Last season, Auburn shot a solid 35.2% (109th nationally) from deep and ranked No. 2 in the SEC in 3-point shooting in league games at 36.4%.
But, last season, Auburn hit double-digit 3-pointers in 10 of its 35 games. So far this season, Auburn has done it eight times in just 14 games. The Tigers haven’t hit double-digit 3-pointers in more than half of their games in a season since the Final Four run, where it happened 26 times in 40 games.
In its SEC opener against Missouri, Auburn knocked down 10 of its 21 3-point attempts for a season-high percentage of 47.6%. Seven different Tigers hit the team’s first seven 3-pointers of the game.
For this edition of the Film Room, let’s take a closer look at the 10 triples Auburn hit against Missouri to find just what makes these Tigers so special from deep.