Film Room: Why new Auburn PG JP Pegues is such a dangerous scorer
The Tigers' newest addition is a pick-your-poison type of weapon who thrives with Bruce Pearl's "threes, frees and layups."
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As of Tuesday night, Auburn was No. 36 overall and No. 7 in the SEC. There’s a chance Auburn could catch Texas, which would be quite the accomplishment.
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PG JP Pegues (On3’s Joe Tipton/Instagram)
For the most part, this past season was a particularly strong one for Auburn basketball on the offensive end of the floor.
The Tigers averaged 83.1 points per game, which was their highest mark since the 1991-92 season and the first time they cracked 80-plus points since the 2017-18 run to the SEC championship. Only 10 teams in college basketball scored more than Auburn, and four of those were from smaller conferences.
Auburn had some rough offensive outings in notable losses, the biggest of which being a first-round NCAA Tournament loss to Yale. But one year after the offense fell to its lowest point since Bruce Pearl’s very first season on the Plains, the Tigers reloaded and reaped the benefits of it in a 27-win campaign.
The leading scorer was Johni Broome, who averaged 16.5 points per game en route to an All-American season. Jaylin Williams’ fifth and final year was quite productive, as he averaged 12.4 points per game and was often a make-or-break piece to Auburn’s success.
Chad Baker-Mazara averaged 10 points per game after making the jump back to Division I ball from junior college, and Denver Jones caught fire down the stretch to average a dozen points over his last 15 outings.
But, surprisingly, Pearl’s highest-scoring offense at Auburn didn’t feature something that had become synonymous with the program’s meteoric rise: A scoring point guard.
Auburn split time almost evenly between 5-star true freshman Aden Holloway and second-year sophomore Tre Donaldson. Neither established himself as the clear-cut option, and the Tigers made the most of the situation by having them share the lead point guard role.
Holloway showed flashes of the shooting that made him a household name in high school, but he finished the season with just 7.3 points per game and a 30.2% 3-point percentage. Donaldson was more efficient with his shot, yet he topped out at 6.7 points per game.
The Holloway-and-Donaldson combo worked for large stretches of the season. However, it was a departure from the norm for Auburn. The Tigers’ starting point guard had averaged double-digit points per game in every season since Pearl’s first one with the program.
Auburn quickly moved to add a transfer point guard at the end of the season, with reports linking the program to several of the top names within a few days after the loss to Yale. Donaldson entered the portal less than two weeks after Auburn’s exit, and Holloway followed him a few days later.
PG JP Pegues (Auburn Tigers)
Then, last Friday, Auburn signed Furman point guard JP Pegues out of the transfer portal. Pegues — perhaps best-known for hitting a wild 3-pointer to upset Virginia in the 2023 NCAA Tournament — chose Auburn over SEC foes South Carolina, Florida and Oklahoma.
“JP is a winner,” Pearl said in a statement. “He is a scoring point guard that has great ability to shoot the basketball. He can score at all three levels, defend and lead. Talking to several great coaches in the SoCon, they unanimously believed he was the best player in their league this season.”
That second sentence felt like the big one.
Pegues is a gifted playmaker and has shown some real grit on the defensive end, which is what you want from a floor general.
But Auburn’s projected starting point guard is first and foremost a scorer — and he could take the Tigers’ offense to even greater heights next season.