One week in, we officially have a new No. 1 team in the country on KenPom.
That crown belongs to the Auburn Tigers, who opened the season with a 51-point drubbing of a perennially excellent Vermont Catamounts team and followed with a pseudo-road win against the preseason KenPom No. 1 Houston Cougars. The Tigers came in at No. 5 in Monday’s AP poll, and that may well have underrated them based on what they showed in the season’s opening week. It’s early to stake this claim, but this Auburn team has a very strong case as the best team in college basketball.
Auburn entered the Houston game in the headlines for the wrong reasons after two players, freshman Jahki Howard and senior Ja’Heim Hudson got into a fight during the team’s charter flight to Houston that caused the plane to return to Auburn. The team took off again later Friday night, but Hudson and Howard were left behind.
The on-flight fracas did little to derail Auburn on the floor, though. The Tigers put together a near-flawless second half Saturday night, scoring 31 points in the game’s final 10 minutes against what may well be the sport’s best defense to rally from nine down and seal an incredibly impressive victory. The star of the show was freshman guard Tahaad Pettiford, whose audacious shot-making ability was on full display with 21 points and five made threes to ignite the comeback. Pettiford, in many ways, is the ideal Bruce Pearl guard: bursting with confidence, dynamic with the ball in his hands and capable of heating up in a big way from beyond the arc. Point guard play was the major question coming into the season for Auburn after Tre Donaldson and Aden Holloway transferred out in the offseason, and Pettiford very much looked the part Saturday night.
It also helps to have Johni Broome, whose national player of the year candidacy hasn’t been talked about nearly enough. Broome is the most complete big in the country, a dominant low-post threat who has expanded his shooting range beyond the three-point arc, while being the anchor of the best rim defense in the country a year ago. He had 20 points and five blocks Saturday, and Houston could do little to slow him despite featuring an elite defensive frontcourt anchored by J’Wan Roberts.
“He’s an absolute monster down there,” Pearl said postgame.
Auburn was a top-five team in KenPom a year ago, but stumbled in its biggest games on the schedule. Entering the SEC tournament, the Tigers had just four wins against eventual NCAA tournament teams, all of which came on Auburn’s home floor. To tally a win like this against the winningest program in the country over the last four seasons away from home is a sign this Tigers team has leveled up. They may not get 21 from Pettiford every night, but the combination of Pettiford, JP Pegues and Miles Kelly looks like a clear upgrade over last season’s Auburn backcourt … and with Broome and Dylan Cardwell still anchoring things down low, that’s a scary sign for the rest of country. Auburn still has games against Duke, Ohio State and Purdue in the nonconference, as well as a trip to the loaded Maui Invitational that tips off with a matchup against Iowa State. Opportunities will be plentiful, but the Tigers passed their first test with flying colors.
And as for the plane incident? The team at least seems ready to laugh it off. Broome mimicked an airplane while running around the floor after the win, and in the locker room, Cardwell announced on Instagram Live, “When you lock a bunch of dogs up on a plane, what did you expect to happen?”