2/25/23 Auburn Articles

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247sports.com

 

'Just don't let them down:' Family comes first for Auburn's Wendell Green Jr.

Nathan King

8–10 minutes

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In the early stages of this season, Wendell Green Sr. was privy to a conversation between his son and a former teammate, Devan Cambridge, who opted to transfer following the Tigers’ 2021-22 SEC championship campaign and landed at Arizona State, where he’s playing with his brother.

The two were catching up on what things are like at Auburn, and how Cambridge is settling in the Pac-12. The athletic wing had high goals for himself this season, but there was one area of his game he knew wasn’t going to be as prolific as it was with the Tigers.

“‘Hey, man, thanks for throwing me all those lobs,’” Green Sr. heard Cambridge joke on the phone. “‘I mean, maybe I get a few here or there. But they don’t throw ‘em up there like you did.’”

Not many do. Wendell Green Jr.’s passing prowess and offensive orchestration, as Auburn’s now-veteran point guard, has been one of the major keys during his time with the program thus far. And it will continue to be this season, as the Tigers look to lock down an NCAA Tournament berth, faced with a daunting three-game stretch to close this season.

But as locked in as Green Jr. gets, especially during a crucial ending to the regular season, he tries not to forget his blessings.

“Now that I’m in this position, I just try to soak it in day by day," Green Jr. said in an sitdown with Auburn Undercover. “It’s crazy, but it’s something I’ve worked for my whole life.”

***

It’s easy for the junior point guard to reflect and be grateful, because he remembers quite vividly the feeling of uneasiness and doubt when he wasn’t sure if he made the right decision to transfer from Eastern Kentucky.

The Detroit native had a big freshman campaign in the Ohio Valley Conference — at 15.8 points per game and 5.0 assists — but after he entered his name in the portal April 1 of 2021, his phone was more silent than he expected.

“My first couple weeks, I didn’t really get any big schools,” Green Jr. said. “Then it was a tough decision, too, because I didn’t get to visit Auburn during COVID.”

By the end of the transfer process, though, Green Jr.’s father, Wendell Green Sr., told Auburn Undercover that around 35-40 Division-I schools had shown major interest in his son. Green Jr.’s favorites were Auburn, Indiana and Marquette.

“It was all about fit,” Green Sr. said. “It was a lot of Zoom meetings, but it got to the point where Auburn just made a lot of sense.”

For the better part of the past decade, if Green Jr. is on the court playing, you could find Green Sr. in the stands. Usually rocking his son’s NIL merch, it’s not difficult to pinpoint Green Jr.’s contingent at games.

“You only have this experience one time, so we have to be there to support him,” Green Sr. said.

(Courtesy: Wendell Green Sr.)

After every road game, Green Jr. climbs the stands to find his supporters, which usually includes some of his extended family, as well. He’s had a small pocket of the arena cheering him on in SEC country, along with other stops across the map.

“My dad has come to almost every game since he stopped coaching me in high school,” Green Jr. said. “It doesn’t matter where it is — USC, Washington, he always shows up. My mom works a lot behind the scenes. The support I get from those two, and my sister, my extended family, it’s amazing.”

Whenever Green Jr. gets down after a bad game, or needs a bit of extra juice to get motivated on a given day, it’s his family and their unwavering support that he always circles back to in his mind.

(Courtesy: Wendell Green Sr.)

“Me being here is bigger than myself,” Green Jr. said. “One day I might wake up and not want to shoot as much that day or not want to work out as hard. But it’s not about me. It’s about everyone’s expectations of me and me needing to exceed that and represent my family.

“I always say to myself, ‘Just don’t let them down.’ That’s the No. 1 thing.”

***

Some of the passes that end up on Auburn’s highlight reels are just old tricks for Green Jr.

“His vision was always there,” Green Sr. said. “He was throwing lobs when he was 8, 9, 10 years old.”

As flashy as they appear, Green Jr.’s passing style is mostly out of necessity, he said.

Whether it’s a no-look or a wrap-around, most of the time, Green Jr. said with a laugh, it’s because he has to account for the fact that he knows he won’t always be able to easily see his targets on the court. He’s listed at a generous 5-foot-11.

“I’ve always been able to make those passes — they end up being highlight passes, but it’s not intentional,” Green Jr. said. “I’m a smaller guy, so if I see someone jumping in the air, I can’t get over them so I have to throw a baseball pass. It’s just about feel for the game. I feel like my patience in the paint has gotten better as the season has gone on.”

Sitting at No. 4 in the SEC with 4.3 assists per game, Green Jr. said it isn’t as simple as tossing a lob up high for his teammates, and putting a pass ahead of them in transition.

That’s why mistakes happen early in the season, and he attributed it to Auburn’s respectable turnover rate (10.7 per game in SEC competition) as the season has progressed.

“Over time it’s just about figuring out how guys like the ball and where they want it,” Green Jr. said. “Johni (Broome) is very different from Walker (Kessler). Walker you could just throw it as high as you can, but Johni isn’t 7-1. That’s just chemistry. It looks like you can build it over the summer but it takes real games and real time for it to happen.”

Green Jr. sometimes had an unstoppable connection with Kessler in their high ball-screen action, and his rapport with Broome has become highly productive, too. Another transplant from the Ohio Valley Conference — where Green Jr. was edged by Broome at Murray State for freshman of the year in the league in 2020-21 — Broome gives Auburn a consistent interior presence to complement Green Jr.’s play in the backcourt.

The junior center remains the only player in the SEC who’s top 5 in the conference in field-goal percentage (52.8), rebounds (8.9) and blocks (2.5).

As Auburn has faced one of the toughest schedules in college basketball, sometimes a good game from both Green Jr. and Broome still isn’t enough for a victory. But the Tigers rarely have much of a chance at all if they’re now playing well.

“If we turn it over or it’s a bad play, we try to never get frustrated at each other,” Green Jr. said. “We just talk it through real quick, right there on the court. That’s just our maturity level. We try to talk about it during games, after games, before games and just try to make sure we’re always on the same page.”

***

That mindset permeates to the rest of the team, who have kept their heads high and been able to impressively wipe the slate clean during a string of losses against their elite competition — six defeats in their last night games, to be exact, with three of their toughest matchups of the entire year still approaching.

They know Green Jr. isn’t going to blink because of a bad game, or even a rough stretch during a game. That was evident Wednesday night against Ole Miss, when the point guard bounced back from a 2-of-18 shooting stretch over his previous two games and was the reason the Tigers avoided a disastrous loss, with 23 points, including 14 points and 8-of-8 shooting at the foul line over the last eight minutes of the game.

(Zach Bland / Auburn Athletics)

“Wen's a baller,” senior wing Allen Flanigan said Thursday. “You're going to miss shots, you're going to make shots. The best players in the world, they have games where they struggle and they shoot it worse. They come back the next night and they shoot it again. So him just trusting his stroke and trusting who he is as a player, just coming back out here and going at it again.”

Auburn’s players repeated this week that they need another win before the regular season is up, with games at Kentucky this Saturday, at Alabama next Wednesday, and against Tennessee at home the following weekend. Green Jr. has to play well for them to get it.

2COMMENTS

He and Auburn are more than okay with that. That’s what he envisioned when he took that leap of faith in the transfer portal.

“I think Wendell is okay with as he goes, we go,” Bruce Pearl said this week. “That's a great compliment. I trust him. I have confidence in him.”

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yahoo.com

 

Auburn’s Bruce Pearl has a message for his basketball team before its game at Kentucky

Cameron Drummond

3–4 minutes

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In the aftermath of Auburn’s latest men’s basketball game — a 78-74 home win over Ole Miss on Wednesday night that proved to be the last straw for former Ole Miss head coach Kermit Davis — Bruce Pearl wasn’t in a completely celebratory mood.

Pearl, now in his ninth season as Auburn’s head coach, spent a decent part of his six-minute, 30-second postgame press conference discussing the Tigers’ shortcomings in the win and how improvement must arrive in short order.

Auburn (19-9 overall, 9-6 SEC) plays at Kentucky at 4 p.m. Saturday inside Rupp Arena.

“They’re athletic, they’re strong. But Kentucky is bigger, stronger and more athletic,” Pearl said Wednesday night, comparing Ole Miss (2-13 in the SEC) to Kentucky (10-5 in league games).

“So we’re going to be up there in Rupp against probably the biggest, best offensive rebounding team in the league.”

On this point, Pearl is mostly correct.

UK is second in the SEC in total offensive rebounds with 374 (Tennessee has 379) and also second in the league in offensive rebounds per game with 13.4 (Tennessee has 13.5).

UK is also 19-4 this season when winning the rebounding battle.

Individually though, the Wildcats boast the league’s best rebounder in Oscar Tshiebwe, who has 90 more total rebounds than former Morehead State star and current Auburn big man Johni Broome in second (239).

On the offensive glass, Tshiebwe is also the league’s runaway leader: 133 offensive rebounds total and a whopping 5.1 offensive rebounds per game.

Even more impressive is the fact that Tshiebwe hasn’t even been at his rebounding best of late.

In last weekend’s rousing home win over Tennessee, Tshiebwe had just seven total rebounds and two offensive rebounds, both of which ranked second on the UK team behind Chris Livingston (10 total rebounds and three offensive boards).

In Wednesday night’s road win at Florida, Tshiebwe’s four total rebounds and two offensive rebounds both ranked third on the UK team behind Livingston and Jacob Toppin.

Perhaps adding to Pearl’s concern level about Saturday afternoon’s fight for loose balls is the fact that Auburn was out-rebounded by Ole Miss, 38-28, on Wednesday night.

Ole Miss had 17 offensive rebounds in that game, and Pearl even offered a premonition for the Kentucky game based on that total.

“If we rebound like we did tonight, we’re going to get beat by 40 (at Kentucky),” Pearl said.

Saturday

Auburn at Kentucky

When: 4 p.m.

TV: CBS-27

Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1

Records: Auburn 19-9 (9-6 SEC); Kentucky 19-9 (10-5)

Series: Kentucky leads 96-23

Last meeting: Auburn won 80-71 on Jan. 22, 2022, at Auburn, Ala.