This is nothing new for Tahaad Pettiford.
Why has Auburn's freshman phenom looked so comfortable when surrounded by much older players? Because that's all he knows.
SAN ANTONIO — Tahaad Pettiford started playing basketball against grown men when he was in the third grade.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Pettiford is officially listed at 6-foot-1 now, but Bruce Pearl said Thursday afternoon at his first Final Four press conference that he might actually be closer to 5-foot-11.
He’s almost always the smallest player on the floor.
And, in this ultra-experienced season of college basketball — where most of his teammates are fourth- or fifth-year seniors — he’s almost always the youngest player on the floor.
Neither of those things bother Pettiford. It’s literally all he’s known, from the time his father and his older cousin started taking him to play pickup with adults a decade ago.
“I’ve always been playing up,” Pettiford said Thursday, leaning back in a chair in front of his locker at the Alamodome. “I was out there against 30-year-olds, getting my shot punched. I couldn’t really do much. But they wanted to just get me out there and help me, prepare me.
“Obviously, it did.”
Auburn plays a rotation exclusively made up of seniors, with just one exception. And the undersized Pettiford is a massive exception.
So far in this NCAA Tournament, only two Auburn players have had a positive box plus/minus in all four games, per Torvik. One of them is fifth-year role player and defensive specialist Dylan Cardwell. The other is Pettiford.
According to CBB Analytics, Pettiford is averaging 23.9 points per 40 minutes and is an overall +54 in plus/minus during March Madness. That’s the second-best mark on the Tigers, only trailing big man Johni Broome. It’s also the second-best mark of any freshman in the Big Dance, only trailing future No. 1 overall draft pick Cooper Flagg.
“He's been unbelievable,” Pearl said. “One of the best freshmen in college basketball this year. You look at him, Cooper Flagg… who has had greater impact on the success of the team than those two guys?”
The NCAA Tournament is supposed to chew young guards up and spit them back out. Being a veteran is huge. You learn how to handle the bright lights and the big stage in your first March Madness or two, then you thrive later.
Pettiford lives to prove that notion wrong. He spent his AAU career playing against older opponents. He’s barely played against guys his own age.
“The Jersey City toughness, it comes through all the time, that confidence,” Pearl said. “He feels prepared. Dad played him up his whole life. He always played against older kids. This is nothing new to him.”
As Pearl so lovingly said last week, Pettiford is the “little s—t” from Jersey that radiates that trademark NYC-area basketball swagger every time he takes the floor.
Are you bigger than Pettiford? Are you older than him? Are you supposed to be better than him?
Good, because you can still get it from him.
“Being the smallest and the weakest on the court, it just gave me the mindset that I don’t like being pushed around,” Pettiford said. “I told myself, ‘Once I get older, I’m not gonna let anybody bully me out there.’”
Just go back to a moment from last week, a couple of days before Auburn made the journey up Interstate 85 to Atlanta for the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.