16 thoughts from Auburn basketball's exhibition win at Furman
The Tigers' 2024-25 season is unofficially underway, and here's what we gathered about what happened in South Carolina on Sunday.
SF Jahki Howard (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
A season that Auburn basketball hopes will feature a championship (or more) unofficially opened Sunday afternoon in South Carolina.
While other new charity exhibitions across major college hoops were televised or at least broadcast in some capacity, everything that happened between Auburn and Furman was for the eyes and ears of those inside the arena in Greenville.
Well, sort of.
I was not at the game Sunday afternoon, as Auburn football’s late game at Kentucky — along with an early-morning flight back home from Lexington — kept me from making the trip. (The plan is for this to be the only men’s basketball game that The Observer misses this season.)
Fortunately, we were able to get some extra insight into the exhibition from friend of the newsletter Henry Patton, who joined Dan and me on the Observer podcast that went out Sunday night. Auburn’s media relations staff also sent me audio recordings of the postgame interviews with Bruce Pearl and freshman guard Tahaad Pettiford.
While I can’t break down everything that happened in the Auburn vs. Furman game like usual, due to the fact that I didn’t actually watch it, I have some thoughts on the action thanks in large part to what I heard from those who were there.
Here are 16 of those thoughts, in no particular order.
SG/PG Denver Jones (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
1: Don’t sweat Auburn’s shooting performance. It was pretty telling that Auburn scored 83 points while shooting less than 20% from deep. The Tigers only had nine turnovers all game and shot above 70% on 2-pointers after halftime. It sounded like Jones and Chad Baker-Mazara, who combined to go 1-9 from deep, had good looks that just didn’t fall. Combine that with the absence of Miles Kelly due to an illness, and there’s plenty of reason to think things can get better in a hurry there.
2: This has the potential to be Auburn’s most disruptive defense since the Final Four team. Auburn hasn’t had a defensive turnover rate of above 20% since the march to Minneapolis, but I wouldn’t be shocked if these Tigers get to that point this season. A Furman team that has routinely been one of the best in the country at taking care of the ball over the last several seasons turned it over 25.7% of the time against Auburn. The added length, experience and athleticism of this squad could be absolutely relentless this season.