Aubserver Mailbag 114: How will Auburn build its next basketball roster?

This week: Transfer portal guards, Aden Holloway, Chance Westry, road trips, football concerns, defensive line depth, pizza and the Braves

Auburn basketball signee Aden Holloway (Instagram)

The signs of how far Auburn basketball has come in nearly a decade under Bruce Pearl are everywhere.

You can look at how a season that was understandably called a “step back” and “below expectations” still came with a trip — and a win — in the NCAA Tournament. It’s not like the Tigers have a ton of those in their history.

You can look at how Auburn produced two of the most successful rookies in this NBA season. You can look at the fact that season tickets have been sold out for years. You can also look in the rafters at the banners that have been added or updated since Pearl’s arrival.

Personally, all I have to do is look at my inbox and Twitter replies.

Auburn went 1-2 in the postseason for the second straight year, losing to a red-hot opponent in the SEC Tournament before going to the Big Dance. This year, a high-scoring win over Iowa led to an uneven and frustrating exit at the hands of No. 1 seed Houston in the second round.

Basketball season is done on the Plains, and this is usually the time where spring football takes center stage. But the vast majority of the questions I got for this week’s return mailbag were about basketball — the sport that starts its next season multiple months after football.

The Inner Circle gets what the Inner Circle wants. While we’ve got a few football questions in here, most of this mailbag is about the roster transformation that is about to take place. We talk transfer portal, who might come back, the potential of McDonald’s All-American signee Aden Holloway and a whole lot more.

Thanks as always for emailing and tweeting your questions. We’ll be back to a regularly scheduled Friday mailbag for the foreseeable offseason future.

If you want to get access to all of this mailbag, all of the future mailbags and all of our podcasts and newsletters for the next year — that’s all of the 2023 football season and pretty much all of the 2023-24 basketball season — click on the button below for our $40 deal.

You said in the podcast at the beginning of this week that we shouldn't expect Auburn to wait for the '24 recruiting class to come in, that they wouldn't sit on their hands while recruiting for this next season.

Pertaining to that, do you think that Bruce may avoid going after guards who have multiple years of eligibility left, considering what the backcourt could look like in '24, with Pettiford and Philon coming in, along with the possibility that both Aden and Tre will be back as well?

Or do you think that it's more likely that he'll just be focused on next season, regardless of how crowded the backcourt may be beyond that?

James

The best way to answer this question is to look at the guards Auburn has reportedly already contacted in the transfer portal. Here’s a list of them, listed in alphabetical order by last name:

• Amaree Abram (Ole Miss): 6-foot-4, 8.0 PPG, 36.4% 3PT, former 4-star recruit, three seasons of eligibility remaining

• Jalen Cone (Northern Arizona): 5-foot-10, 17.6 PPG, 40% 3PT, former Virginia Tech guard, one COVID season remaining

• Damian Dunn (Temple): 6-foot-5, 15.3 PPG, 34.8% 3PT, two-time All-AAC pick, potentially two seasons remaining

• Denver Jones (FIU): 6-foot-4, 20.1 PPG, 37.1% 3PT, first-team All-CUSA, Alabama native, looks like two seasons remaining

• Nicolas Timberlake (Towson): 6-foot-4, 17.7 PPG, 41.6% 3PT, two-time first-team All-CAA pick, one COVID season remaining

• Paxson Wojcik (Brown): 6-foot-4, 14.9 PPG, 38.0% 3PT, former teammate of Wendell Green Jr., one COVID season remaining

Auburn’s initial surge into the transfer portal has skewed older and taller, but what’s coming down the line hasn’t stopped Pearl and his staff from going after younger players such as Jones and Abram. (Central Arkansas’ Camren Hunter was also an early target for the Tigers, but he’s already trimmed down his list of finalists.) Cone sticks out on this list because of his size, but you can’t argue with a 40% clip from deep and power-conference experience.

Additionally, Auburn has reportedly reached out to 4-star 2023 shooting guard Blue Cain, a top-100 prospect from IMG Academy who was released from his NLI at Georgia Tech following the firing of Josh Pastner. At 6-foot-4 with a strong shooting stroke, Cain fits the mold of a lot of players Auburn has already contacted.

If you count the 3s in with the 1s and 2s as the backcourt for Auburn, it’s only guaranteed to lose Zep Jasper and is bringing in Aden Holloway. The rest of the guards — Wendell Green Jr., Tre Donaldson, K.D. Johnson, Chance Westry and Allen Flanigan — could come back for another season. (This is counting Chris Moore as a 4, where he finished this season.)

With roster turnover being like it is in the transfer portal era, I think the best course of action is to be in win-now mode and deal with the numbers later. Auburn isn’t sure exactly how many scholarship spots it’ll have for the portal until several individual decisions are made, but it is already having to start contacting transfers to have any realistic shot at landing them. Auburn reached out to Wojcik before its first SEC Tournament game, if that tells you anything.

Attrition is just a fact of life in this era of college basketball, and it would be stunning to see no one transfer out of the program this offseason. The good news is that Auburn appears to have two free scholarships available before anyone else makes any decisions to stay or leave. That means the Tigers can go ahead and make moves without getting into an immediate numbers crunch.

I liked a lot of this basketball team individually — there was never a lack of heart or effort — and they had their moments (and let me never take March basketball for granted!!).

The team as a whole, however, just didn't seem to work. They were frustrating to follow and seemed to play their worst when the most was on the line.

If this was a NBA team and we had everyone securely under contract, I think you'd have to break them up and rebuild the roster.

So, here's the question... if you're the GM (and no player is willingly leaving) who do you build around? What pieces do you keep and in what capacity? Or, would you be willing to roll out this same roster next year?

Chris

I’ve gotten several questions like this over the last several weeks, and I completely understand why. Everyone knows there’s going to be some sort of roster rebuild this season on the Plains. And, like I said in the previous answer, attrition is gonna happen. It’s been a while since Auburn had any offseason that didn’t feature an outgoing transfer.

But I want to be very clear upfront that I want to answer this question as respectfully as possible in regards to the players who I’ve covered. I’m not going to sit here and say “this guy should leave,” or “Auburn would be better off without him.” That feels really insensitive, first and foremost. Also, it’s not my place. I’m just a guy who covers the team, not a staff that has to deal with the human element of these decisions.

Still, I think I can answer Chris’ (very good) question in this way.