The Auburn Tigers will open their season Tuesday night inside Auburn Arena against a formidable foe in the Morehead State Eagles. Led by coach Preston Spradlin, his Eagles are coming off a year where they ended their season by winning 19/20 games, rolling through their conference tournament to a championship, and clinching an automatic bid to March Madness as a 12 seed before being sent home by West Virginia in the round of 64.
Opponent: Morehead State Eagles
2020-2021 Record: 23-8 (17-3)
Predicted to finish 2nd in the OVC for 2021-2022
Kenpom #161
As a fan, you never want a member of your team to get injured. However, there can be certain positives that come out of an injury to a key player when someone else is thrust into the fire and forced to contribute. An injury to starting forward Tyzhaun Claude brought on the emergence of Johni Broome. Broome is a 6’10 center coming off a freshman season where he racked up OVC player of the year honors, as well as being named the OVC tournament MVP. He’s an enforcer down low who will not attempt to step out of his post range for any reason. Last season he averaged 13.8 ppg ad 9 RPG. This is going to be an exciting matchup between Broome and Auburn’s new frontcourt in Jabari/Kessler. If Auburn wants to win this game, they have to limit Broome’s success down low on O, as well as keeping him off the offensive boards where he is a key contributor.
The rest of the Eagle’s starting lineup will probably look similar to this:
PG – Ta’lon Cooper (6’4)
SG – Skyelar Potter (6’3) Preseason All-OVC
SF – Tray Hollowell (6’3) Transfer from Wofford
PF – Tyzhaun Claude (6’8) Returning from injury after missing 2020-21 season
Morehead St. has good size across the board, and they are a physical team when it comes to defense/rebounding. Last year they finished the season with a +6 rebounding margin which was good for 24th in the nation. Spradlin’s team tends to rely on their half-court defense, as they don’t pressure the ball much they don’t tend to force many TOs. Auburn will have to do a much better job at getting into their half-court sets on O, and swinging the ball inside and out to get good looks in order to have success. If last year is any indication, Auburn will get its fair share of open looks from three. Spradlin's team is content to let teams take outside shots versus getting beat in the paint. Expect them to crash hard and force Auburn to hit some outside looks before adjusting their gameplan. Auburn needs guys like Cambridge/KD/Wen to nail some long distance shots to open up things inside for Walker/Bari/Jaylin to get to work. On the defensive side, I expect Auburn to have success with their full court pressure. Morehead St. did not value possessions well last year and ended the season with 477 team turnovers. I expect to see a lot of max press after made baskets by Auburn. The depth Auburn has even without Al should allow Bruce ample opportunity to enforce his will on opposing ball handlers with his press. It's time to see the impact KD and Zep will have on a team that struggled to defend at the guard position last year.
This will be an excellent game to open the season. Bruce had a lot of coaching points to work on following the exhibition, and if the team hasn’t improved on some of those issues then I expect Morehead St. to have a fair amount of success. I think this game will boil down to who values the ball more. If Auburn can speed up the game and cause Morehead to cough the ball up 10+ times, then I think Auburn wins running away. If Morehead State is allowed to bog down the game and keep Auburn reliant on their half-court offense then that puts them in a much better spot to leave Auburn Arena with a victory. Overall, I think Auburn will come out much faster than they did in the exhibition, and I think Bruce will have driven home a message to Jabari Smith that he can and should take over games like this. I don’t know that this will be the game to make Kessler a focal point on O due to Broome’s abilities on D, but if Walker can step out and bury some threes like he’s capable of doing then that changes how Morehead State has to defend the Tigers. I think we’ll see a new starting 5 and I think by the end of the second half we’ll get a nice glimpse of what this team is capable of doing to opponents once everything finally clicks.
Auburn – 72
Morehead State - 64
Tip-off scheduled for 7 CT on SECN+
S/O @Jay G. Tate for letting me write a little something for you guys.
@crococile22 @BarnBasketball @jslowery @jhead34382 @Cclemente
Always value input from you boys.
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