Jaylin Williams isn't gone for the season... but what will Auburn do while he's out?
The Tigers got positive news Sunday, as their fifth-year star has a chance to return this season. Yet they'll have to play some without him.
PF Chaney Johnson (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
When Jaylin Williams was helped off the floor Saturday night, not being able to put weight on his left leg, many people watching assumed the worst.
This was around the same time of the year when former Auburn big man Anfernee McLemore suffered a season-ending leg injury in 2018. Auburn lost that game to South Carolina and would drop four of its last seven that season. The Tigers still won the SEC title and ended their NCAA Tournament drought, but they weren’t the same.
But, on Sunday morning, the news out of Auburn was positive and — honestly — somewhat surprising: After undergoing an MRI, Williams was ruled to have not suffered a season-ending knee injury.
Officially, Williams’ absence from the floor is indefinite. National college basketball reporter Jon Rothstein tweeted that a source told him Williams is “out for a couple of weeks.”
Auburn has three weeks left in the regular season: One game next week at Georgia, a trip to Tennessee and a home game against Mississippi State the following week, and a trip to Missouri and a finale against Georgia to close. The SEC Tournament starts March 13, while the first round of the NCAA Tournament is March 21 and 22.
Getting Williams back at all this season would be a huge victory for Auburn, considering how rough the injury looked Saturday night. Getting him back before the start of the postseason would be even bigger.
Still, Williams looks like he’s going to miss some time for the Tigers. It’ll be quite tough to fill his shoes, too: He’s averaging 14.5 points and 4.5 rebounds per game in SEC play, trailing only Johni Broome in both categories. His 26.8 minutes per conference game leads the team.
“If Jaylin’s out, we’re going to have to figure some things out,” Pearl said. “I think we have guys that will step up. … If he’s out for a little while, it’s got to be next man up. That’s a significant loss.”
Auburn has won games without Broome excelling, and it’s lost games with him playing some of his best basketball of the season.
Williams is a different case. He’s averaging 15.1 points per game and shooting 65.2% from the field in Auburn’s wins this season. He’s averaging just 6.0 points per game and shooting 32.6% from the field — with zero 3-pointers made in a dozen attempts — in Auburn’s losses.
“It’s not like I’m giving the scouting report away, but when Jaylin Williams has played well, we’ve won,” head coach Bruce Pearl said Saturday night. “And he’s only really not played well in about four or five games. Those happen to be the games we lost. The math’s kind of scary. Give Jaylin Williams credit.”
Barring a setback in his recovery, Auburn should have Williams back on the floor sometime this season. The loss at home to Kentucky won’t be the final game of what has been an illustrious five-year career on the Plains.
But Auburn is likely going to have to manage multiple games without Williams. He’s been a constant presence in the Tigers’ rotation, having only missed two games in the last four seasons. And what he does as an ultra-experienced veteran at a challenging position in Pearl’s system is quite tough to replace.
The silver lining in all of this is that Auburn doesn’t have to play a game in a day or two. The Tigers finally get their midweek break in the SEC schedule, so they have a full week to prepare for what they’re going to do without the Georgia native when they head to Athens for a Saturday night rivalry game.
“The depth on this team and the chemistry on this team — we’ll put it together,” Pearl said. “We’ll get something. We’ll be ready for the next one.”
What could that look like? Let’s take a closer look at several areas the Tigers might need to improve in order to best manage a tough situation without Williams.