Deep-fried Auburn hoops burning hotter than ever

[aubiefifty 18,238]

Deep-fried Auburn hoops burning hotter than ever

By Joseph Goodman | jgoodman@al.com

6-7 minutes

Rankings in college basketball matter less this time of year than sunscreen, but I’ll be the first person to admit feeling a slight pang of burning annoyance when Auburn wasn’t ranked No.1 in the latest AP Poll.

Auburn is No.2 this week behind Gonzaga, which was touched up by Alabama back on Dec.4 in a game played in Seattle. Hard to compare teams separated by so much geography, right? About that…

Gonzaga is a great team, sure, but Auburn deserved to be No.1 after winning three conference road games since the start of the new year, including, and this is key, just the 11th victory at the University of Alabama in Tigers basketball history. Road wins in Tuscaloosa are rare gems for Auburn basketball. Alabama leads 52-11 at home in the Iron Bowl of basketball. Consider, for perspective, that Auburn football is 7-6 all-time in Iron Bowls of football played on UA’s campus.

Auburn is a basketball school now, they tell me, so it’s tough to know which form of the Iron Bowl rivalry the Tigers value most. We’ll let Auburn’s deep-fried memes decide.

RELATED: Why one AP voter had Auburn ranked ninth this week

RELATED: Auburn hoops is letting K.D. Johnson be himself

RELATED: Inside the receiving end of an Auburn Twitter storm

GOODMAN: Alabama envy will follow Oregon player to NFL

I know this much. When Auburn wins at Alabama, it means a little more than when Gonzaga wins at Santa Clara.

Auburn made the Final Four in 2019, knocking off Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky in consecutive games. It was an all-time NCAA Tournament run, but those Tigers started to truly believe with two games left before the SEC Tournament. That’s when an unranked Tigers squad won 66-60 at Alabama.

Since that game, which marked Auburn’s first regular-season sweep of Alabama and Georgia since 1967, the Tigers have transformed into a basketball powerhouse. Auburn (16-1, 5-0 in the SEC) has Georgia at home (5-12, 0-4) at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, and that game’s gonna be messy.

Raucous and rowdy, Auburn has the best home-court advantage in college basketball, which is a major reason for the program’s sustained success, and easily the best story in college basketball this season. This new-blood Auburn basketball, with a fanbase that feels like soccer hooliganism dipped in a deep fryer, is something blue-blood college basketball isn’t quite sure what to do with. Auburn had 36 first-place votes to No.1 Gonzaga’s 25, which means a lot of voters are still a little confused by what’s happening on The Plains.

Or maybe AP voters just don’t like Bruce Pearl.

Let’s not ignore the elephant in the room. Yes, absolutely, there is resentment around the country this season for Auburn’s success on the court and against the NCAA infractions committee. Remember back in 2020 when national writers were so furious at Auburn for forfeiting the chance at a postseason that it probably wasn’t going to make? I wrote then that it was a brilliant gamble, but others didn’t see it that way.

What everyone failed to understand, or at least acknowledge, was that the glacial speed of the NCAA’s investigation was punishment enough.

Even now, with Auburn the envy of the country, the Tigers are still feeling the effects of that slow bleed.

This team is electrifying, but it could have been better if guard Scoot Henderson would have chosen the Tigers over going from high school to the NBA G-League. Can’t blame Henderson for his choice, because the future was still uncertain for Auburn at the time, but no one can convince me that toiling away in the G-League at 17 years old is any better for Henderson’s development than playing in college for a team like Auburn and a coach like Pearl.

It certainly isn’t as fun. All things considered, and that includes the paycheck, Henderson is missing out. Just look at the experience Jabari Smith is enjoying in what is likely his only season of college basketball.

On Monday, Smith was named SEC freshman of the week for the third time this season. Celebrate him while you can, Auburn, because he probably won’t be on campus for much longer. Smith, who is 6-10, makes it look easy like a young Kevin Durant made it look easy. They say stars shine brightest in big games, and so it was a great sign that Smith had a career-high 25 points in that road win against Alabama. More importantly, Smith also recorded four blocked shots.

It’s not just that Pearl gets the most offensively out of his best players. It’s that he molds them into the type of two-way stars that NBA teams covet and will draft in the first round. Maybe even more so than college football, college basketball is in a critical transitional period as the country’s best high school prospects wrestle with the choice of college or the G-League. Consider this, though, before pointing to the money top prospects are earning in the NBA’s developmental league.

Smith has built himself into a potential No.1 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft. Henderson, who could have played alongside Smith this season, is instead coming off the bench in the G-League. He didn’t even play in his first six games with team G League Ignite, and hasn’t started in the 13 games since.

A lot can happen between now and the NBA Draft, but Smith is probably going to come out ahead in the long run thanks to his time at Auburn. For now, he’s having the time of his life in college, Auburn is the frontrunner for an SEC regular-season championship and the Tigers are chasing the only ranking that really matters — a No.1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

What else do the Tigers have to do? Beat Kentucky, of course. In the SEC, the answer always goes back to Big Blue. No.12 Kentucky (14-3, 4-1) visits Auburn Arena on Saturday, and The Jungle will be hotter than a deep-fried grease fire by then.

 

 

[AUBwins 10,268]

5 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

Deep-fried Auburn hoops burning hotter than ever

By Joseph Goodman | jgoodman@al.com

6-7 minutes

Rankings in college basketball matter less this time of year than sunscreen, but I’ll be the first person to admit feeling a slight pang of burning annoyance when Auburn wasn’t ranked No.1 in the latest AP Poll.

Auburn is No.2 this week behind Gonzaga, which was touched up by Alabama back on Dec.4 in a game played in Seattle. Hard to compare teams separated by so much geography, right? About that…

Gonzaga is a great team, sure, but Auburn deserved to be No.1 after winning three conference road games since the start of the new year, including, and this is key, just the 11th victory at the University of Alabama in Tigers basketball history. Road wins in Tuscaloosa are rare gems for Auburn basketball. Alabama leads 52-11 at home in the Iron Bowl of basketball. Consider, for perspective, that Auburn football is 7-6 all-time in Iron Bowls of football played on UA’s campus.

Auburn is a basketball school now, they tell me, so it’s tough to know which form of the Iron Bowl rivalry the Tigers value most. We’ll let Auburn’s deep-fried memes decide.

RELATED: Why one AP voter had Auburn ranked ninth this week

RELATED: Auburn hoops is letting K.D. Johnson be himself

RELATED: Inside the receiving end of an Auburn Twitter storm

GOODMAN: Alabama envy will follow Oregon player to NFL

I know this much. When Auburn wins at Alabama, it means a little more than when Gonzaga wins at Santa Clara.

Auburn made the Final Four in 2019, knocking off Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky in consecutive games. It was an all-time NCAA Tournament run, but those Tigers started to truly believe with two games left before the SEC Tournament. That’s when an unranked Tigers squad won 66-60 at Alabama.

Since that game, which marked Auburn’s first regular-season sweep of Alabama and Georgia since 1967, the Tigers have transformed into a basketball powerhouse. Auburn (16-1, 5-0 in the SEC) has Georgia at home (5-12, 0-4) at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, and that game’s gonna be messy.

Raucous and rowdy, Auburn has the best home-court advantage in college basketball, which is a major reason for the program’s sustained success, and easily the best story in college basketball this season. This new-blood Auburn basketball, with a fanbase that feels like soccer hooliganism dipped in a deep fryer, is something blue-blood college basketball isn’t quite sure what to do with. Auburn had 36 first-place votes to No.1 Gonzaga’s 25, which means a lot of voters are still a little confused by what’s happening on The Plains.

Or maybe AP voters just don’t like Bruce Pearl.

Let’s not ignore the elephant in the room. Yes, absolutely, there is resentment around the country this season for Auburn’s success on the court and against the NCAA infractions committee. Remember back in 2020 when national writers were so furious at Auburn for forfeiting the chance at a postseason that it probably wasn’t going to make? I wrote then that it was a brilliant gamble, but others didn’t see it that way.

What everyone failed to understand, or at least acknowledge, was that the glacial speed of the NCAA’s investigation was punishment enough.

Even now, with Auburn the envy of the country, the Tigers are still feeling the effects of that slow bleed.

This team is electrifying, but it could have been better if guard Scoot Henderson would have chosen the Tigers over going from high school to the NBA G-League. Can’t blame Henderson for his choice, because the future was still uncertain for Auburn at the time, but no one can convince me that toiling away in the G-League at 17 years old is any better for Henderson’s development than playing in college for a team like Auburn and a coach like Pearl.

It certainly isn’t as fun. All things considered, and that includes the paycheck, Henderson is missing out. Just look at the experience Jabari Smith is enjoying in what is likely his only season of college basketball.

On Monday, Smith was named SEC freshman of the week for the third time this season. Celebrate him while you can, Auburn, because he probably won’t be on campus for much longer. Smith, who is 6-10, makes it look easy like a young Kevin Durant made it look easy. They say stars shine brightest in big games, and so it was a great sign that Smith had a career-high 25 points in that road win against Alabama. More importantly, Smith also recorded four blocked shots.

It’s not just that Pearl gets the most offensively out of his best players. It’s that he molds them into the type of two-way stars that NBA teams covet and will draft in the first round. Maybe even more so than college football, college basketball is in a critical transitional period as the country’s best high school prospects wrestle with the choice of college or the G-League. Consider this, though, before pointing to the money top prospects are earning in the NBA’s developmental league.

Smith has built himself into a potential No.1 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft. Henderson, who could have played alongside Smith this season, is instead coming off the bench in the G-League. He didn’t even play in his first six games with team G League Ignite, and hasn’t started in the 13 games since.

A lot can happen between now and the NBA Draft, but Smith is probably going to come out ahead in the long run thanks to his time at Auburn. For now, he’s having the time of his life in college, Auburn is the frontrunner for an SEC regular-season championship and the Tigers are chasing the only ranking that really matters — a No.1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

What else do the Tigers have to do? Beat Kentucky, of course. In the SEC, the answer always goes back to Big Blue. No.12 Kentucky (14-3, 4-1) visits Auburn Arena on Saturday, and The Jungle will be hotter than a deep-fried grease fire by then.

 

 

That was a fun read. 

[MaxCohen216 514]

Nice to see Goodman promoting Auburn basketball, instead of denigrating Auburn football.  Maybe he's realistic after all.

[tgrogan21 6,198]

8 minutes ago, MaxCohen216 said:

Nice to see Goodman promoting Auburn basketball, instead of denigrating Auburn football.  Maybe he's realistic after all.

He's pretty much just hopping on the bandwagon now that it's clear this team is for real. But it was a good read and glad to get any bit of positive press even if it is from Goodman.

[Chaotic_zx 1,070]

You tricked me into reading an al.com article. I don't appreciate it /s

 

 

[cole256 17,085]

On 1/18/2022 at 7:13 PM, tgrogan21 said:

He's pretty much just hopping on the bandwagon now that it's clear this team is for real. But it was a good read and glad to get any bit of positive press even if it is from Goodman.

He made that stuff up about scoot though. Dude is a crap reporter