Aubserver Mailbag 156: What's up with Auburn's shooting in road games?

This week: Crunch time, SEC expansion, more lineup fun, Aden Holloway, the NFL Draft, Gulf seafood and Oxford recommendations

PF Jaylin Williams (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

It’s traveling season at The Observer.

Last week, I made road trips to both Alabama and Mississippi State for Auburn basketball. Then I spent a couple of days in Mobile at the Senior Bowl before coming back home for more hoops. Tomorrow, I’ll head to Ole Miss for the weekend. Next weekend, it’ll be Florida.

As I’ve said before, we couldn’t do any of this — and rather easily, I might add — without all the generous support of our thousand-plus paid subscribers. I love hitting the road to get the best possible coverage of Auburn men’s basketball and football for y’all, even if it means I have some extremely late nights and a little travel fatigue.

To that point, the lead question of this week’s mailbag is all about the biggest puzzle facing Bruce Pearl and his team: What’s up with the shooting in road games?

We attempt to answer that, along with plenty of Auburn basketball questions and a few football questions, before a lightning round of food takes to finish it off.

It’s a classic winter Observer mailbag. Let’s go.

How do Auburn road shooting woes compare to other top teams? And specifically other top teams playing tough teams? How does it compare to other SEC teams?

John

Auburn basketball has played five true road games this season: a loss to Appalachian State, a win over Arkansas, a win over Vanderbilt, and the back-to-back losses to Alabama and Mississippi State last week.

What’s interesting is that, despite the 2-3 record, Auburn hasn’t been a bad team on the road. In true road games, the Tigers are No. 6 nationally on T-Rank. That makes some sense, considering the three losses came by a combined 15 points against a top-10 team, a top-30 team and a top-100 team. The wins are a 32-point blowout over a near top-100 team and a 15-point win over, well, arguably the worst power-conference team in the country.

The strength of this rating is a top-five defense, but Auburn’s offense hasn’t been terrible in these road games. T-Rank has Auburn as a top-60 offense on the road, aided by a top-50 mark in 2-point field goal percentage, a top-25 mark in turnover rate, and a top-55 mark in offensive rebounding percentage.

The obvious and massive flaw is the 3-point shooting. Auburn has shot just 24.4% from 3-point range in true road games, which currently ranks No. 355 out of 362 teams nationally. The only top-25 team remotely close to Auburn in road 3-point shooting is Oklahoma, which is at 28%.

But practically everyone shoots worse on the road. While Alabama is No. 12 overall in 3-point shooting this season, it’s now No. 254 in road games. Houston is No. 209. Other contenders like North Carolina, Tennessee and UConn are more toward the middle of Division I in this category. Purdue, Duke and Illinois are pretty good road-shooting teams, yet there are a lot more top teams who are average at best.

In SEC games, Auburn is the league’s No. 9 team in 3-point shooting. In home SEC games, it’s No. 5. In road SEC games, it’s No. 11. That Appalachian State performance really did a number on the overall percentage, and it’s worth noting that there have been worse SEC teams at shooting 3s on the road than the Tigers in conference play.

And this isn’t an “Auburn can’t shoot unless it’s inside Neville Arena” thing, either. Auburn is shooting a strong 41.6% from 3-point range in neutral-site games, which trails old friend Baylor for the best mark of any team that’s played five of those games. Of course, postseason games are played on neutral floors, so that’s a positive sign for the Tigers’ future.

To maximize its chances in the postseason, though, Auburn is going to need to shoot better in its remaining road games. It’s going to be difficult to win away from home in SEC play with such low percentages from deep.

The good news is that Auburn has already played two of its toughest defenses it’s going to face all season on the road (Mississippi State and, yes, Appalachian State) and will only face one more elite defense away from home: Tennessee. Georgia is the next highest-rated one, sitting at No. 55 in adjusted defensive efficiency.

Auburn’s road shooting woes have been a combination of tough defenses and some tougher luck — the latter standing out in the loss at Alabama. The Tigers were forced into some lower-percentage looks at Mississippi State, but they’ve mostly had solid shot selection away from home. The looks just haven’t fallen at a high enough clip.

Part of the solution could be a better distribution of the 3-point chances.