How Auburn basketball built a better offense with March in mind
The Tigers upgraded their roster in the offseason, and it's paid off with a hot-shooting and slick-passing attack that's clicking at the right time.
SG Denver Jones (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
This time last year, Auburn was entering the SEC Tournament in Nashville with an offense that noticeably had to grind things out much more than usual.
The Tigers had scored 80 points in regulation just twice in its final 10 games of the regular season. They ranked outside the top 200 nationally in effective field goal percentage and had the program’s roughest offensive numbers since their final season before ending the NCAA Tournament drought in 2018.
Auburn faced Arkansas in the second round of the SEC Tournament and scored 73 points in a loss. A week later, it cracked 80 points on Iowa but ran out of gas in the second half against No. 1 seed Houston.
Pearl and his staff quickly went to work in the offseason, looking to upgrade the roster. Auburn had already signed 5-star point guard Aden Holloway, but it needed more. The Tigers landed high-scoring mid-major guard Denver Jones, well-traveled JUCO sniper Chad Baker-Mazara and top Division II player Chaney Johnson.
Before the season began, Pearl flatly stated that Auburn was going to be better on offense — specifically when it came to shooting the ball.
Auburn fans might have lost faith in that claim at times in the regular season, whether it was the low-scoring loss at App State or back-to-back rough shooting performances at Alabama and Mississippi State. Those doubts could have increased after the Tigers lost to Kentucky at home with a brutal offensive display.
But Auburn will enter the SEC Tournament this week — on Friday, as a top-four seed with the benefit of a double-bye — as one of the hottest offenses in all of college basketball.
Over the last five games, per T-Rank, Auburn’s offensive rating of 133.7 leads all of Division I. The Tigers are No. 5 nationally in both 3-point field goal percentage (45.1%) and effective field goal percentage (60.8%). They’ve delivered a nation-best 100 assists to just 53 turnovers, a stunning ratio of 1.89.
“Well, I'm glad to see now that when I tell you guys something at the beginning of the season, you might believe me,” Pearl said with a slight smile Saturday, after Auburn ended its regular season with a comfortable home win over Georgia. “I'm glad to see that I was open and honest.
“I felt like we'd shoot it better this year. I thought we'd shoot it better this year, but I have a really high standard. And the kids will tell you that I have a really high standard. We're a hard team to scout, because we've got so many guys that can shoot it, make plays.”
Late-season offensive success isn’t guaranteed to carry over into the postseason. But Auburn is clearly in a better position on offense than it was this time last year — and, in several ways, even better than a 2022 SEC championship squad that had first-round draft picks Jabari Smith and Walker Kessler.
Don’t believe it? Let’s just look at the numbers.