The Stretch 4: Duke should be Auburn's toughest test of the season
The Tigers will get one of the biggest stages of them all: A primetime showdown with the ultra-talented Blue Devils... in their house.
(Steven Leonard/Auburn Tigers)
DURHAM, N.C. — When it was first announced that the SEC would end its annual Challenge with the Big 12 and start one with the ACC, plenty of people connected to Auburn basketball dreamed of headline-making showdowns with traditional powers.
But, last year, Auburn got to host… Virginia Tech.
While the Hokies weren’t a total pushover, they were also a program that had never won an ACC regular-season championship and hadn’t made a deep NCAA Tournament run since 1967.
Auburn cruised to a 74-57 victory over Virginia Tech, with Johni Broome scoring a career-high 30 points. Auburn would turn into one of the top teams in the country by season’s end. Virginia Tech would go .500 in the ACC and play in the NIT.
Bruce Pearl, among others across the SEC, raised questions about the quality of the matchups his team received. After all, Auburn went months without getting a valuable Quadrant 1 victory.
So, for the second edition of the ACC/SEC Challenge, things look very different for Auburn.
“My reward for raising some attention to the subject was to have to go to Duke,” Pearl said with a small laugh Monday.
Even with a couple of losses already this season, Duke is considered a consensus top-five team by all the major analytics-based ratings systems. T-Rank and Haslametrics both have the Blue Devils at No. 1 in the country.
Jon Scheyer has another talent-loaded team, with four 5-stars — led by unanimous No. 1 overall prospect Cooper Flagg — joining a squad that returned some legitimate experience on the roster. And, of course, Duke always has the famous home-court advantage of Cameron Indoor Stadium, where Auburn will visit Wednesday night.
“Best team we've played so far,” Pearl said. “Iowa State is awfully good, but Duke is just so deep and so big, so talented. And obviously without question, it's the toughest environment we will play in.”
It’s a monster step up from last year. Still, it’s worth noting that this Auburn team is also very different from the one that hosted Virginia Tech a season ago.
Auburn is the No. 1 team in the country on KenPom, and it nearly jumped Kansas for the top spot in the AP poll earlier this week after sweeping the Maui Invitational with wins over a murderers’ row of Iowa State, North Carolina and Memphis.
As Broome said Monday, Auburn “went to Maui expecting to win.” While a visit to Duke might be one of the only times Auburn will be a projected underdog for quite some time — if not the entire season — the Tigers are keeping that mindset.
“It's every kid's dream to go and play in Cameron,” power forward Chaney Johnson said. “So finally, to have the opportunity to go in there and win a big game — it's big for us. It's same mentality. Just go in there and win, make sure we do everything the scout tells us to do and the coaches tell us to do.
“Just go and handle business, honestly.”
To get you ready for Auburn’s massive showdown with Duke on Wednesday night here in Durham, here is this week’s edition of The Stretch 4.
C Johni Broome (Steven Leonard/Auburn Tigers)
Auburn’s No. 1 offense vs. Duke’s No. 1 defense
If you’re looking for best-on-best basketball, you might not get anything better than what you’ll see Wednesday night when Auburn has the ball against Duke.