Pearl still learning his new team

Coming off a season where it won an SEC championship, Auburn is returning seven players and three of its four leading scorers.

Despite this, Bruce Pearl told reporters on Wednesday that he knows less about this year's team than most other teams he's coached.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, he just has a versatile roster and has to figure out where to play guys.

"I have several guys returning that will be playing different positions," Pearl said.

Auburn has its starting point guard in Furman transfer JP Pegues, but who plays behind him is up in the air.

Towards the end of the season, Denver Jones spent time running point guard, a position that was basically brand new to him.

Now with a full off-season of running point, Pearl is set to have Jones run a bit of point guard along with his natural shooting guard position.

During the summer, the expectation was that Tahaad Pettiford was going to play solely off-ball, but the freshman's play during summer workouts has changed Pearl's expectations a bit.

"For his own personal development, he looks he can also play point and handle the load of playing three positions," Pearl said. "Because the two and the three are identical positions, one's just on one side of the floor and one's on the other side of the floor -- and the enormous responsibility of the 1, where you need to know every position. And he's demonstrated to me that he can handle rotations at point guard."

Regardless of who ends up being Auburn's full-time point guard, Pearl knows the importance of having a deep point guard room, which is why he wants to have three guys that can run the position.

"We've always played two point guards," Pearl said. "If you don't have that third guy in the rotation and one of those guys gets hurt, what do you do? It definitely helps as far as our depth is concerned."

Johni Broome is in a similar situation, just at a different position.

Broome played 12 minutes of power forward when Jaylin Williams was out against Georgia, and because of his ability to stretch the floor and guard the perimeter, Broome has the ability to run at both power forward and center.

And because of this, Pearl feels he can start him at either, and will use the month of practice before the season starts to determine what position Broome will start at.

"Whether or not Dylan (Cardwell) starts at five and Johni starts at four, or Chaney (Johnson) starts at four and Johni starts at five, that's all going to be taking place this month," Pearl said. "And it could change during the course of the year too because of matchups and things like that. They're all gonna play. They know they're all gonna play."

Auburn has quite a few returning players, but it also has a lot to learn about its roster between now and the start of the season, including some of its returners.

It's a good problem to have.

"I'm going to learn a lot more about my team the next four or five weeks," Pearl said.