Auburn Basketball Exhibition Reactions: SEC Tip-Off Breakdown & Ballin' in Boutwell Analysis

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Ike Jones (0:14)

It's basketball season again. What did we learn from the Auburn Tigers from their first exhibition?

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The Auburn Express.

Ike Jones (0:56)

Auburn Express TV Lobtown Show. Your boy Ike Jones in here talking a little Auburn basketball. We have completed the SEC tip-off. Got to hear from both Coach Steven Pearl and Coach Larry Vickers. Balling in Boutwell is done. Got to see both the Auburn women and men's basketball team. I am going to start the conversation with what we got from the SEC tip-off, which is the media days for basketball.

Steven Pearl was out there and he basically talked about his team and what he is expecting from the season.

You can see the full comments from him on our channel here and hear what he had to say if you are out there on Podcast World as well. This over there on the Auburn Express there on Podcast. But anyway, he talked about the roster construction.

He's been saying this, this is not new information coming out of SEC Top Off particularly, but that he felt as if this roster was better constructed to be able to do the things that they want to be able to do both offensively and defensively.

Still have some eligibility issues for a couple of guys that will make the roster complete. But for the most part, this team is going to be bigger, going to be stronger, and we're hoping to see that on display moving forward the next day. So listen, you got a Tuesday situation where you're talking about what you expect from the season. On Wednesday, you got an opportunity to go out there and prove it at the exhibition game that you have versus Florida State ball and about well. Fast forward 24 hours later, and it's upon us a little more than 24 hours because they spoke that morning. But still the next day, balling and about well happens and Auburn takes on Florida State there for men's basketball. And I don't think we saw what Stephen Pearl and the players said we would see there. Tahad Pettiford, Kevin Overton, both there along with Stephen Pearl at the SEC tip off. And they talked about how they felt like they were going to be the best back court returning to the SEC this season. And I just didn't see a dominant back court out of them. I didn't see guys who took over the pace and control of the game. I didn't see guys who just kind of were able to put a stranglehold on what was happening. What I saw, unfortunately, were, and it's an exhibition game. I am not going to overreact to an exhibition and try to give you a projection of what Auburn is going to be this season. I'm just reacting to what I saw on Wednesday night on the floor there in Boutwell Auditorium. What I saw was Stephen Perl and his staff tinkering with lineups.

I saw guys that looked winded. They looked tired at points in time. The effort and the energy just wasn't there consistently. Specifically speaking of at this point in time, the Herald and back court returning. I just didn't see a lot of energy and effort from the, well, I'm not going to question the effort of the guards. I do think that they played with a lot of great effort in the minutes that they were out there. But I did see guys that were tired, guys that I watched last season play 30 plus minutes per game. And let's just kind of look at what the minutes distribution was for them in this game.

So we can talk about that more concretely, but I did see where it just looked like they were tired, right? And so, but yeah, you know, let me remove effort from that because I don't think that that was an effort issue for those guys in particular, but I did see tired out there. So Tahad Pettiford on the night, played 30 minutes, Kevin Overton, 33 minutes, and they played those types of minutes last year. So this isn't like they had to play more minutes than they were accustomed to. But in an exhibition game, I didn't want to see them have to play 30 minutes. That's the reason why you brought some of these other guards into the situation. But Tahad Pettiford scored 20 points. He was the high point person for Auburn in the game, six of 18 shooting, four of 11 from three. Perfect from the free throw line, four of four. Did not get a rebound in this game though. The bigger issue that you're going to have with Tahad, and year three in college basketball, year two of him being the lead guard for you, two assists and four turnovers. If you're going to be the point guard on a team, you just can't have a two to four assisted turnover ratio. It needs to be flipped on its head. In fact, it should be three to one in the opposite direction. So when it's one to two, that's not what you want out of a guy that's playing 30 minutes there for your team. So I didn't love what I saw in terms of one of the things that Tahad Pettiford talked about in the ball and the SEC tip-off was about how the chemistry was better with this team off the floor than last year's team. And they felt like that was going to pay dividends on the floor. And I just didn't see a cohesive team, particularly offensively. I saw a very stagnant team offensively that was just kind of throwing the ball around the perimeter and then jacking up threes for the most part. Florida State stayed in zone for the vast majority of the game, well, for long stretches of the game. I don't know what the actual distribution there was between zone and man, but they stayed in zone a lot. And Auburn did not seem to be able to work the ball to the interior as well as they should have been able to for a team that is supposedly a little bit better connected this year. So it was a little disappointed, particularly in the offensive execution. The defense wasn't terrible. They gave up 82 points, but a lot of that was towards the end of the game, where it felt as if the spirit of that team had just kind of left. They weren't playing inspired basketball after a run from Florida State there towards the end. Kevin Overton, his stat line, 10 points on three of 15 shooting. He was two of 10 from three. He did not have the three point shot working in this game. And that's really a large part of what Kevin Overton's game is. He needs to be able to knock down threes and he had some good looks that just didn't fall for him. So I don't think that that's a situation with KO that I'm worried about. I think he's been kind of a streaky shooter last season where he'll have games where he doesn't shoot it well. And then the next couple of games, he'll light it on fire. So I'm not really worried about that from KO standpoint until I see two or three games strung together where he's not shooting well. Two of three from the free throw line. He did get five boards on the game, one offensive, four defensive.