On Saturday, Bruce Pearl’s Auburn Tigers collected their 21st win of the season with a 97-76 victory over Georgia in Athens. The No. 11 Tigers, are currently fourth in the SEC with a 10-4 conference record but still trail No. 4 Tennessee, No. 14 Alabama, and No. 18 South Carolina.
Auburn has a matchup with the first-place Volunteers on Wednesday, which could ultimately decide the regular season champion in the conference and the top seed in the SEC Tournament. Last year, Arkansas bounced the Tigers in their opening game of the tournament, but this Auburn roster is much better, will likely clinch the double-bye to the quarterfinals, and has a very real shot at claiming the auto-bid from one of the most competitive conferences in college basketball.
Pearl’s team this season is unique because of the depth on the bench. His rotation has gone as much as 11-deep at points in the year but has recently been cut to around nine. That’s still two or three more players than other national title contenders typically trust. No player on Auburn’s roster averages more than 25 minutes and leading scorer Johni Broome averages 16.1 points in just 24.5 minutes.
That depth and versatility with multiple wing scorers, Jaylin Williams and Chad Baker-Mazara, a deep backcourt with Aden Holloway, K.D. Johnson, Denver Jones, and Tre Donaldson, and two rim protectors in Broome and Dylan Cardwell. The Tigers can play with unmatched intensity on defense which has manifested in the fifth-rated adjusted defense by KenPom.
Auburn allows the 14th-lowest opponent three-point shooting percentage and the fourth-lowest two-point field goal rate. With so much depth and versatility, the only players who have been able to find success scoring against the Tigers' defense in SEC play have been volume shooting guards. This group has tormented Auburn so far this year and are the five players that the Tigers do not want to run into in Nashville.
Kugel has been the biggest disappointment on Florida's roster in his sophomore year. Instead of turning into a star for Todd Golden, Kugel’s mercurial play has landed him on the bench, and in Florida’s last two games he’s played three and six minutes respectively.
Still, Auburn would prefer not to run into Kugel and if the Tigers drew the Gators in the tournament, Golden would almost be forced to give Kugel minutes. When the two teams met on February 10 in Gainesville Kugel dropped 22 points on 16 shots in 29 minutes. He went 3-7 from three and 5-5 from the free throw line in Florida’s 81-65 win.
In that one, Kugel played his best game since November and went into an immediate funk after that breakout, but the 6-foot-5 scoring guard is a tough matchup for Auburn. At 6-foot-4 205 Denver Jones is the biggest of Auburn’s four undersized guards, so players like Kugel are difficult for the Tigers to defend.
There’s a chance Kugel is out of Florida’s rotation by March, and yet Auburn fans would get a shiver down their spines if he takes the floor in Nashville.
Okay yes, this may sound ridiculous because Auburn just beat South Carolina by 40 points, but Meechie Johnson had a solid game and fits the archetype of a player that Auburn has struggled with. The 6-foot-2 guard is averaging 13.5 points on 11.2 shots a game and shoots 82.6% from the foul line.
Johnson scored 22 points in that Auburn blowout and went 8-17 from the field. It was far from a dominant performance, but he displayed a quality that is essential to succeeding against an elite defense like Auburn. Johnson has amnesia when it comes to his misses. Last time out against Ole Miss he went 1-11 from the field, but he won’t be gun-shy when South Carolina plays Texas A&M on Wednesday.
It doesn't matter if his shots aren't going down, he'll stay confident and keep taking them, which is necessary against Auburn.
South Carolina is 48th in KenPom and 62nd in adjusted offense. Auburn exposed how overrated the Gamecocks are, but the Tigers aren’t 40 points better than Lamont Paris’s team. I would expect a much closer matchup if the two meet in the SEC Tournament and Meechie Johnson will either shooting his team into or out of the game, but he won’t stop shooting, that’s for sure.
Reeves is a much more experienced, savvy, and efficient version of Johnson. When these two teams met on February 17, Reeves, not Kentucky’s freshmen guards, took over the game. For all the attention Rob Dillingham and Reed Sheppard get, Reeves is still John Calipari’s leading scorer and in the Wildcats’ 70-59 win over Auburn he finished with 22 points on 8-20 shooting.
It was not an efficient day for Reeves in that one, but when a game ends with a total under 130, it’s hard to expect that anybody shot the ball well. The game turned into a slog, not Kentucky’s typical up-and-down pace or even Auburn’s up-tempo turnover-heavy transition style.
There were moments of transition excellence, but more than the pace, the low score was a product of poor shooting. Kentucky shot 44.4% from the field while Auburn finished 17-55 (30.9%). Reeves bailed Cal's team out of possessions with his shot-making while K.D. Johnson tried to match and left Pearl completely exasperated with six points on 3-10 shooting.
Adou Thiero also presented a lot of issues for Auburn defensively. His size and strength on the wing made him difficult for Baker-Mazara to deal with, but he was too quick for Broome, Williams, or Cardwell. Kentucky relied on multiple off-ball curl screen actions with Reeves and Thiero which helped the Wildcats close the game out.
Really, when playing Alabama, one question determines the outcome of the game; how well did the Crimson Tide shoot from three? Alabama is fourth in three-point attempts and 14th in three-point percentage at 37.9%. Nate Oats leans heavily on analytics and has completely phased out the mid-range game from his offense.
Oats’s style has made Alabama a high-variance team, but this season Mark Sears has emerged as their steadying force. Sears is averaging 20.4 points a game, up from 12.2 last season, and is shooting 50.9% from the field and 44.7% from three on 5.2 attempts per game.
Sears has scored over 20 points in 10 of Alabama’s last 11 games and against Auburn he dropped 22 in Alabama’s 79-75 win over Auburn on January 24th. Then, he scored 25 in the February 7th rematch which Auburn won 99-81.
With his shooting and quickness, Sears is a difficult matchup for any team, but at just 6-foot-2 his lack of size means he’s not the worst matchup that the Tigers could draw in the SEC Tournament.
The Northern Colorado transfer came to the SEC and just took over the conference. Knecht is averaging 20.1 points a game on 47.7% from the field and 40.3% from three. The 6-foot-5 scoring wing has the length to shoot over defenders, the strength to finish around the rim, and the quickness to get separation off screens or with the ball in his hands.
Though his NBA translation is unclear, Knecht is essentially the Platonic ideal of a wing scorer in college basketball. Auburn has yet to face Knecht and the Vols, so on Wednesday, it will be crucial to watch how they defend him. He’ll just shoot over the 6-foot-4 Denver Jones, bully the 6-foot-7 180-pound Baker-Mazara, and run by 6-foot-8 245-pound Jaylin Williams.
There isn't any way to stop the SEC’s second-leading scorer, but Kentucky has done the best job of any team. The Wildcats had 6-foot-8 205-pound Justin Edwards with his 6-foot-11 wingspan or 6-foot-8 222-pound Adou Thiero glued to Knecht all game.
That strategy held Tennessee’s leading scorer to just 16... and gave up 102 points in a loss in the process. There’s no right answer for Knecht and that’s why he’ll be the SEC Player of the Year.