AUBURN | Is this Auburn’s best-ever men’s basketball team?
The people are asking and I’m not saying, ‘No.’ But that can’t be determined until March, and perhaps April if things go really well.
Bruce Pearl’s 11th Auburn team looks mighty special and is completely dismantling most of its opponents on both ends of the floor.
Don’t let Saturday’s *only* 19-point win over No. 16 Purdue fool you. The 2nd-ranked Tigers eviscerated last year’s national runner-up, leading by 33 with seven minutes left.
The only reason the Boilermakers were able to get it under 20 was an 11-0 run over the final two minutes after AU subbed in its walk-ons.
Auburn has six Quad 1 wins, the most in the country, and has the highest-ever offensive rating of 131.2 in the 21-year history of the KenPom rankings.
Even a non-stat nerd like me is impressed. And AU has done it playing a historically tough non-conference schedule.
I was a little concerned about this team’s leadership and chemistry going into the season, but it turns out that might be its biggest strength.
This team shares the ball like no Auburn team I’ve seen before. It’s seventh in the country averaging 19.2 assists per game and center Johni Broome leads AU with 40 assists. Forward Chad Baker-Mazara is third with 32 assists, backup forward Chaney Johnson fifth with 26 and center Dylan Cardwell sixth with 25.
Amazing.
The flight fight back on Nov. 8 wasn’t a sign of trouble on the team. It was an opportunity for the players to come closer together and grow, especially freshman Jahki Howard, who seems to get better every time he steps on the floor.
Tahaad Pettiford is playing like one of the best freshmen of the Pearl era — and there’s been plenty of really good ones.
Not to mention the incredible production of Denver Jones on both offense and defense, the sharp-shooting of Miles Kelly and the consistency of Broome bringing double-doubles almost every night.
This team is really good and just needs to stay hungry and understand that many of the other top teams around the country are going to be better once we get to March.
Auburn will have to do the same.
The Tigers will improve to 12-1 after it plays 2-10 Monmouth next Monday. Then comes a brutal conference schedule. It’s not hyperbole to say the SEC is as strong as its been in its 91 years of existence.
AU may very well move up to No. 1 later today, but currently eight league teams are ranked in the top 25 including five of the top seven. The next three receiving votes are SEC schools.
Auburn will open conference play against Missouri, which beat No. 1 Kansas two weeks ago, and then play nine games against ranked teams over the next nine weeks.
The schedule includes home and away games against No. 6 Alabama, No. 17 Ole Miss and one-loss Georgia, home games against No. 1 Tennessee, No. 7 Florida, No. 14 Oklahoma, one-loss Mississippi State and two-loss Arkansas, and away games against No. 4 Kentucky, No. 12 Texas A&M, one-loss Vanderbilt, two-loss Texas and LSU, and three-loss South Carolina.
It’s going to be an absolute dogfight every single week and Auburn should enter the melee as the favorite or co-favorite to come out on top.
Just don’t expect perfection or an easy ride to the finish line. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if the regular season championship wasn’t decided until the finale against the Tide at Neville Arena March 8.
But that conference schedule is an opportunity for Pearl to add another championship trophy to his haul and a very important opportunity for Auburn to compete and improve.
They’ve done that over the first seven weeks of the season and the next big test begins in 12 more days.
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If you want a full understanding of what Will Redmond has meant to Auburn’s work in the transfer portal, just look at the numbers.
Two weeks into the 2024 winter portal, the Tigers have signed 14 players and filled almost every need under the direction of AU’s new GM of Player Personnel.
Two weeks into last year’s December portal, AU had secured just one player -- wide receiver Robert Lewis from Georgia State.
That’s a stunning turnaround and Redmond deserves a lot of credit for the complete 180 along with Hugh Freeze for recognizing the need and AU’s entire staff for putting in the effort.
It also doesn’t hurt that Signing Day was moved back more than two weeks so schools could wrap up their high school signees before portal season got underway.
Still, the work AU has put in is remarkable, especially filling very critical needs at quarterback and left tackle.
There’s still a couple of needs left to fill at Buck linebacker and defensive tackle, and the staff might add a couple of more depth pieces too.
But the Tigers are a much more talented team than they were three weeks ago and that should give every supporter hope that this dark era of four consecutive losing seasons is coming to an end in 2025 and Auburn is on the cusp of competing for much bigger prizes.
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In today’s musical journey, we go back 58 years to the opening of a club in London with a house band that went on to become one of the greatest progressive rock bands of all time. On Dec. 23, 1966, the UFO club on Tottenham Court Road opened with Pink Floyd as its house band. The club lasted for just seven months at Tottenham Court Road and another two at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm before closing. During its short time, the club hosted many other musical artists including Jimi Hendrix, Procol Harum and Jeff Beck. It also displayed avant-garde art including collections by Yoko Ono. Pink Floyd’s last performance at the UFO club was July 28 as they moved on to bigger venues. The band first formed in 1963 as Sigma 5 and underwent several name changes before settling on Pink Floyd in 1965. Rogers Waters and Sid Barrett met while attending school in Cambridge while Waters met Nick Mason and Richard Wright studying architecture at London Polytechnic. The four formed Pink Floyd together, although Barrett left in 1968 due to mental illness and drug use and was replaced by David Gilmour. It was Barrett who came up with their iconic name based on two of his favorite blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
Pink Floyd released seven albums between 1967 and 1972, but had their breakout with 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, which included its first top 10 hit, “Money,” and a number of other singles that remain popular today including “Breathe,” “Time” and “Us and Them.” The Dark Side of the Moon, which was recored at Abbey Road Studios, had a record 741-week stay on the Billboard 200 album chart and sold more than 45 million copies. More very successful albums followed including 1975’s Wish You Were Here, 1979’s The Wall and 1987’s A Monetary Lapse of Reason, which included more hit songs such as 1975’s “Wish You Were Here,” 1979’s “Hey You,” 1980’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II),” the band’s only No. 1 single in the U.S., and “Run Like Hell,” and 1987’s “Learning to Fly.” Waters left Pink Floyd in 1987 but the band continued to tour through 1994 and make albums through 2014. They reunited for a concert in London in 2015. Pink Floyd has sold over 250 million albums, which ranks seventh all-time. They won a Grammy Award in 1995 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance for “Marooned” and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
