Auburn basketball: Preseason top-10 ranking? One analyst thinks so

It’s still about a month and a half away, but excitement for the Auburn basketball team is building.

With the return of Austin Wiley and Danjel Purifoy, expectations are high after the Tigers won the SEC regular season a year ago and reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the 2002-03 season.

This week, one college basketball expert released his preseason Top 25 and his top 10 featured the usual suspects: Kentucky (1), Kansas (2), Duke (3), North Carolina (7) and Villanova (8), as well as — you guessed it — the Auburn Tigers.

Right there at No. 10, the Stadium’s Jeff Goodman writes:

"The Tigers will be more traditional in their look this season, but like Tennessee, it’ll be interesting to see how they respond to being the hunted."

Auburn basketball now is the hunted.

That has a ring to it, doesn’t it?

The path won’t be easy in 2018-19. From Goodman’s rankings, Auburn faces No. 1 Kentucky twice, No. 22 Washington, No. 18 Mississippi State twice, No. 16 Alabama twice, No. 10 Tennessee and possibly No. 3 Duke in the Maui Invitational.

From the behind-the-scenes glimpses we’re getting from the Auburn athletic department, things look like they’re going well for the Tigers this offseason:

Here’s the Auburn basketball schedule for the upcoming season:

Nov. 2: Lincoln Memorial (exhibition)
Nov. 6: South Alabama
Nov. 9: Washington
Nov. 14: Mississippi College

MAUI INVITATIONAL
Nov. 19: Xavier
Nov. 20: Duke or San Diego State
Nov. 21: Arizona or Iowa State or Gonzaga or Illinois

Nov. 28: Saint Peter’s
Dec. 4: UNC Asheville
Dec. 8: Dayton
Dec. 15: UAB (at Birmingham)
Dec. 19: at N.C. State
Dec. 22: Murray State
Dec. 29: UNF

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Jan. 9: at Ole Miss
Jan. 12: Georgia
Jan. 16: at Texas A&M
Jan. 19: Kentucky
Jan. 22: at South Carolina
Jan. 26: at Mississippi State
Jan. 30: Missouri
Feb. 2: Alabama
Feb. 5: Florida
Feb. 9: at LSU
Feb. 13: Ole Miss
Feb. 16: at Vanderbilt
Feb. 20: Arkansas
Feb. 23: at Kentucky
Feb. 27: at Georgia
March 2: Mississippi State
March 5: at Alabama
March 9: Tennessee

SEC Tournament: March 13-17 (Nashville)

The Auburn basketball returns six of its top eight scorers from last season and that doesn’t include Purifoy, who was second on the team in scoring in 2016 and Wiley, who was the team’s fourth-leading scorer despite missing Auburn’s first nine games of the 2016 season.

Auburn basketball projected starting lineup

G Jared Harper (Jr.): 13.2 points, 5.4 assists
G Bryce Brown (Sr.): 15.9 points, 2.0 rebounds
C Austin Wiley (Jr.): 8.8 points, 4.7 rebounds, 1.3 blocks*
F Danjel Purifoy (Jr.): 11.5 points, 4.7 rebounds*
F Anfernee McLemore (Jr.): 7.4 points, 5.3 rebounds, 2.7 blocks

Key reserves

F Chuma Okeke (So.): 7.5 points, 5.8 rebounds
C Horace Spencer (Sr.): 4.7 points, 4.9 rebounds, 1.2 blocks
G/F Malik Dunbar (Sr.): 5.4 points, 2.4 rebounds
G Samir Doughty (Jr.): 9.0 points, 3.6 rebounds at VCU in 2016-17

* 2016-17 season stats