What did we learn from Auburn basketball's two exhibitions?
Before the Tigers officially tipoff their season in two days, let's look at what they did in a pair of blowout wins over solid Division I teams.
Two things to get us started: First, we are running a discount for the first week of Auburn basketball season. New subscribers can get their first 12 months at the Observer for either $4 per month or $40 for the whole year.
The Observer is planning to be at every single Auburn basketball game this season — including this weekend’s showdown in Houston and the upcoming Maui Invitational. So, if you’re looking for in-depth coverage of Bruce Pearl’s Tigers, join us for what is shaping up to be a fun campaign on the Plains.
Second, we have a little more than 30 Observer koozies left over from our sale earlier this season. I’m going to use this off week in football to try to clear the rest of the inventory out and put that money to the basketball travel budget.
The koozies are $5 each, and I accept either Venmo or PayPal. If you’d like to claim one, send an email to the1andonlyjf@gmail.com. First come, first serve.
PG/SG Denver Jones (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — Welcome to the opening week of college basketball season.
On Monday, there will be 199 different games that have at least one Division I men’s basketball team in action. From the massive openers like Baylor at Gonzaga and Ohio State vs. Texas to ones like Alice Lloyd at Eastern Kentucky and Mid-American Christian at Nebraska-Omaha, there will be a lot going on across the country.
One of the few teams in the country that won’t play either Monday or Tuesday, though, is Auburn — the AP poll’s preseason No. 11 team in the country and a projected top-10 squad by several analytics-based ratings systems.
No. 11 Auburn will open season No. 11 under Bruce Pearl on Wednesday night against Vermont, an NCAA Tournament mainstay that has won the America East Conference in six of its last eight seasons. The Catamounts are a projected top-100 team on KenPom, and they’ve had Pearl’s attention for a good chunk of the preseason.
“One of the things I made the guys do was circle Vermont,” Pearl said a couple of weeks ago. “Like, right now, circle Vermont. That’s the one that counts. … We’ve got to get ready for Vermont. Vermont has won their league more than they’ve lost their league. They’re going to come in really, really good.”
While Auburn will spend the next two days gearing up for its opener, Vermont is already in the state of Alabama and will face UAB in Birmingham on Monday night.
It’ll be interesting to see how much of an advantage or disadvantage it will be for Vermont to have already played a competitive game before facing Auburn. It’s a quick turnaround from a Monday night matchup to a Wednesday night one.
But it’s not like Auburn will be totally untested coming into that opener, either.
Auburn is coming off of not one, but two preseason exhibitions against a pair of Division I teams that weren’t too far behind Vermont in the projections: KenPom No. 104 Florida Atlantic and No. 167 Furman.
In years past, Auburn would have usually only played a single exhibition game against a non-Division I team at this point — along with a behind-closed-doors, no-fans “secret scrimmage” against a Division I program.
This year, though, Auburn has already faced two opponents around the caliber of the ones it usually faces in non-conference play. The Tigers won both rather easily: an 83-62 road win over Furman and a 102-70 home victory over Florida Atlantic.
“These games matter, too,” Pearl said before the start of exhibition play. “We’ll keep score, and we’ll see how we do. And I’m not going to be experimenting — I’m going to be doing everything I can to win these games. But Vermont is the one that counts.
“If we don’t play very well against Furman or Florida Atlantic, I won’t be happy, I won’t be pleased, we’ll work on things. Or if we play really well, in these first couple of games, don’t get too excited about it, because these don’t count.”
Well, Auburn played well in both of those games. And while they didn’t count in the official win-loss columns, the exhibition victories provided an early look at what we could expect from a heavily hyped team of Tigers against Division I competition.
Here’s what we learned from Auburn’s two wins over Furman and Florida Atlantic — and how those lessons could carry into an opening week that features a visit from Vermont and a trip to face an ultra-elite Houston team.
SG/SF Miles Kelly (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)