One of the Auburn basketball team's biggest struggles under first-year head coach Steven Pearl was its defense, which was somewhat surprising seeing as the younger Pearl was previously Auburn's defensive coordinator.
"Pearl obviously did not fully dictate Auburn's practices last year until Bruce Pearl retired in September, though anyone around the program knows he was largely running the show well before that," writes Nathan King for Auburn Undercover. "Steven Pearl's first Auburn team probably couldn't have been helped much defensively no matter when his father retired — or at least the Tigers hope their personnel was lacking and that aspect of the team can see notable improvement next season. Auburn didn't have much size, for starters, playing a 6-foot-9 center and a 6-foot-7 power forward, along with having to rely on a lot of young players in the lineup."
With the remaining players on this year's roster arriving on campus last month, a big focus during the Tigers' summer practices will be on improving the defense, especially now that the team has the size that it did not have last year.
Pearl and his staff added a trio of big men—7-foot Narcisse Ngoy, 7-foot-1 Bukky Oboye and 6-foot-10 Owen Freeman—along with several more players in the 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-7 range. The coaches have a lot more height to work with this year, but Pearl says the players' ability to play defense will impact their usage on the court.
"It's all going to be based on what positions they can guard," Pearl said. "That's the most important thing where you decide offensively where they can play. Can they guard guards or can they only guard bigs? That's one of the things we're trying to find out this summer through the things we're doing in practice."
Pearl said that the coaches are very focused on finding out who the best individual defenders on the team are, and they're getting to know the eight new players on the roster and their abilities.
They will also use their upcoming foreign tour in Greece to learn more about the team and how to plan for games once the season starts later in the fall. It will be the Tigers' first foreign tour since 2022, when former head coach Bruce Pearl took the team to Israel. They also went to Italy in 2017.
In Pearl's second year as the Tigers' head coach, he will be hoping to take a big step forward with his team's defense, and hopefully he will have the players to do so.
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