Pearl: ‘We lack some quickness’
AUBURN | From the first day Auburn’s freshmen arrived, they’ve heard the importance of stepping up on defense at the college level.
Most come in with pretty advanced offensive skills, but lacking on the defensive end. Learning and implementing what it takes to play defense in the SEC, that takes time and can be a struggle.
It’s exactly what Bruce Pearl and his young Tigers are going through right now. Auburn, which has nine freshmen and sophomores on scholarship, has lost three consecutive games and it’s been the defense that’s been the biggest issue.
“There are just some things that we can teach and show on film and drill, but if they don't communicate and recognize out there on the floor, they're going to struggle -- we're going to struggle,” Pearl said. “And so that's been our struggle, some of that recognition of coverages, of communications, of switching out and the things that we like to try to do and our defensive execution.
“The offensive execution has been a little bit better short of just turning the ball over a little bit too much. That's a little bit of maybe an execution as to why we've struggled to guard better.”
According to KenPom, Auburn has a defensive efficiency of 98.3, which ranks 106th nationally, an opponent’s effective field goal percentage of 49.0, which ranks 139th and a steal percentage of 8.9, which ranks 191st. Perhaps the most alarming advanced stat is opponents have a 31.0 offensive rebounding percentage against Auburn, which ranks 276th.
The biggest positive on defense is blocked shots. Auburn leads the country with 122, averaging 6.1 per game.
“We're so challenged defensively that there is lots of room to improve,” Pearl said. “How much this team will improve between now and the end of the year? I can tell you the schedule gets tougher.”
Pearl points to his perimeter defense as a real problem area. Georgia and Ole Miss’ guards were able to drives past defenders with ease in the last two games. Auburn struggled with help defense and when they did rotate over, often left an offensive player free for an easy backside rebound and layup.
“We lack some quickness,” said Pearl of AU’s backcourt. “That would be just from a personnel standpoint. We've got big long guards. But our guards have been lined up pretty good. And part of it is just a quickness factor. In the sense that Javon (McCormick), Samir (Doughty), Isaac (Okoro) were all quicker defensively than any of our five guards out of Sharife (Cooper), Jamal (Johnson), Devin (Cambridge), Al (Flanigan) and Chris (Moore).
“Obviously, the potential's there, but I mean that's our biggest challenge. Guys are playing hard. We just, the quickness, keeping people in front, has been our biggest challenge.”
Auburn plays at Vanderbilt Tuesday night. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. CT on SEC Network.