The Stretch 4: Back to the Grind
Let's check in on the freshmen, break down Auburn's biggest improvement, praise the JYD and consider *another* year for Denver and CBM.
After a few days off for the holidays, we’re back. Here’s a fresh basketball newsletter from our conversation with Bruce Pearl on Friday. Dan and I will have a premium podcast episode for subscribers out Saturday.
And we want to extend a special welcome to all of our new subscribers who received gift subs over the past week. We hope you enjoy being a member. Buckle up, because it’s going to be a fun next few months on the Auburn basketball beat.
HC Bruce Pearl (Steven Leonard/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — Breaks during a high-level college basketball season are rare, both literally and metaphorically.
Auburn got a literal break this week, taking five days off after yet another neutral-site blowout win over a Big Ten team last Saturday. The Tigers returned to a quiet campus Friday and returned to practice, with Bruce Pearl proudly announcing that “everybody’s back, and everybody’s healthy.”
The time for rest and relaxation around the holidays came during a time where Auburn didn’t get many metaphorical breaks.
Auburn is 11-1 with just one game left in its non-conference journey. A 2-10 Monmouth team will visit Neville Arena on Monday night, and a win there would ensure that Auburn would have the best non-league winning percentage among SEC teams over the last nine years. Right now, the Tigers are 92-15 (.859).
To be able to say that after the non-conference schedule that Auburn has gone through this season is a major accomplishment.
The Tigers stared down the most ambitious scheduling in program history — a virtual road game at Houston, a loaded Maui Invitational field, a trip to Duke and neutral-site showdowns with Ohio State and Purdue — and only walked away with a single loss.
“From a reflections standpoint, we're playing good basketball on both ends of the floor,” Pearl said Friday, before the start of practice. “We're sharing it. We're shooting it. I think we're defending well. We're rebounding the ball a little bit better. Areas we can continue to improve on are transition offense and defense.”
This time next week, Auburn will be opening SEC play against Missouri. That will start a conference gauntlet unlike anything in the history of the conference. As it stands right now, the SEC has three of the top four, six of the top 19, 11 of the top 38 and 14 of the top 47 teams in the NCAA’s NET ratings.
Auburn has played the toughest non-conference schedule in the SEC at No. 11 overall, per KenPom. Seven of the teams ahead of the Tigers are from small schools, and Auburn has beaten the only three power-conference teams ahead of it. (Because, of course, No. 1 Auburn can’t play itself.)
“We’re going to be continuing the grind,” Pearl said. “For others in our league — some of the teams in our league — they’re gonna be starting the grind, because they’ve not played the schedule that we played. But about half the teams in our league have played a schedule very similar to ours. I think it’s just that you take it one at a time.”
Auburn’s return to the grind will continue with Monmouth, a sub-270 KenPom team that is led by Abdi Bashir Jr. — a 6-foot-7, 160-pound gunner who shoots 43.2% from deep at nearly 10 attempts per game and ranks No. 9 nationally in scoring at 21.6 points per game.
Led by former North Carolina point guard King Rice, the Hawks from West Long Branch, New Jersey don’t have much success to their name this season, outside of Bashir’s scoring heroics. But Monmouth is No. 25 nationally in average height and has already beaten a high-major team in Seton Hall on the road.
For Auburn, the game Monday night will be an opportunity to pick up where it left off and wrap up non-conference play with another victory. Then it’s a dive into an SEC schedule that will feature a bright, shining target right on the Tigers’ collective back.
“As we get ready for league play, teams in the league really know us, and they'll throw lots of different things at us,” Pearl said. “We're going to start to see more zone, we're going to start to see more run-and-jump, we're going to see more trapping. We're going to see more things, as we get into league play, where people are not gonna let us do what we do and let us get in our comfort zone.
“How well we respond to that, you know, will determine whether or not we keep growing. Staying humble, hungry and healthy are obviously keys.”
For more on Auburn basketball as it makes its return from the holiday break and ramps up for what should be a thrilling 2025, here is this week’s Stretch 4.
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)