Mailbag 193: How big have Auburn's Year 2 jumps been?
This week: CBM at the 4, orange unis, SEC breakouts, biggest challenges, Jeffrey M'ba, third-down defense and Tenda Chick (RIP)
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
What do you anticipate being the biggest accomplishment that Auburn will have that you will write about in the lifecycle of your new laptop?
Josh
AUBURN — New year. New laptop. New mailbag.
According to our archives, The Auburn Observer has published 1,621 combined newsletters and podcasts since we started this thing nearly 4.5 years ago. The vast majority of those were created on a MacBook Pro that was retired Thursday morning in favor of a new upgrade.
That MacBook saw a lot over the years, and its life cycle began even before The Observer was a thing. (I actually bought it with a “technology stipend” that I got at a previous employer.) It covered two different SEC regular-season championship teams in basketball and two different SEC Tournament title runs. Remotely, it covered a Final Four. (I will be bitter about the fact I wasn’t in Minneapolis forever.) It went to Maui, San Diego, Spokane, Seattle, Los Angeles, Brooklyn and South Dakota for games.
It’s fitting then, after all that Auburn basketball success with the old laptop, that the new one is starting out with a chance to see an even better team. It feels like Bruce Pearl is running an upgraded version of his best squad right now, and the proof is in a historic non-conference slate that finished with a 12-1 record and a “best-we’ve-ever-seen-to-this-point” KenPom rating next to the Tigers’ name.
The old laptop saw a gradual decline for Auburn football, and it’s unclear when the new one will get to cover a championship game. My career has seen Auburn basketball grow from very little into a powerhouse while football fights to rebuild things to what it was when I first started. Both are fascinating to cover in their own unique ways, but a winning program is much better for business.
All that to say, I think there’s a chance that the biggest accomplishment the new laptop will get to see might be happening right now. Nothing is guaranteed in basketball, especially with a best-ever conference schedule forming and the unfair chaos of a single-elimination postseason looming. Still, my best bet is this team.
And, starting Saturday, the next phase of a thrilling campaign begins. Can’t wait.
I hope all of you had a great holiday season. We’re diving right back into the mailbags, even though the exact timing of them might change from week to week due to travel and other scheduling things. You asked a lot about this Auburn basketball team and some more about the rebuilding job that’s still underway in football. Also, Tenda Chick.
Let’s go.
Bruce Pearl is known for maximizing his "Year 2 bump" with new players. How do Auburn's second-year players' (Denver, Chad, and Chaney) improvements compare to prior second-year players under Bruce?
joshdub
I tried to figure out the best way to answer this question using a specific number. Each number in basketball, even the advanced ones, have some sort of deficiencies. How do you try to measure the total impact of a player, considering basketball is a team game and there are different roles?
The number I landed on was box plus/minus, which is defined as “a box score estimate of the points per 100 possessions a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team.” It combines both offensive and defensive impact, along with the full range of stats you’ll find in a box score.
The limitations to this are easy to identify. Frontcourt players usually do better in this metric than backcourt players, because they have more opportunities to get rebounds and blocks while also taking higher-percentage shots on average. Players on better-performing teams will do better in this stat, too. That could make it tough to compare across different squads of different talent levels.
That being said, we’re looking more at the improvement in box plus/minus from Year 1 to Year 2 than the statistic itself. I went through Auburn’s multi-year players over the last decade and measured the difference in BPM from their first two seasons.
Here are the best year-to-year jumps for Auburn’s backcourt players under Pearl: