Auburn basketball assistant coach responds to discussions about team’s age
Auburn men’s basketball is having arguably it’s best season to date.
The Tigers are 25-2, lead the strongest conference in the country and have been ranked No. 1 in the AP poll for the last seven weeks. One of the many driving forces of that success is the team’s collective experience.
The team’s senior-heavy roster has drawn criticism and jokes from opposing fanbases, but assistant coach Steven Pearl pointed out how that has become the norm in college basketball when speaking on The Next Round Tuesday morning.
“I think we’re like the fifth-oldest team in the SEC. So, we’re not that old,” Pearl said. “We’re 25th in the country in DI experience. So, people want to keep making a big deal of it — we’re not that old. That’s the landscape of college basketball now.”
Auburn’s roster features 10 seniors (eight who are in the rotation) and seven of those 10 were on the team last season. While having older players has become normal, that level of retention has become rare around the country in recent years.
“Being able to keep guys like Johni [Broome], Chad [Baker-Mazara], Denver [Jones] and Chaney [Johnson] and Chris Moore and Dylan Cardwell, that’s the biggest thing that people don’t talk about,” Pearl said. “We were able to retain six of our core from last year’s team and then we didn’t have to bring in 11 new guys like a lot of teams in the country have this year.
“With the age of the transfer portal and unlimited eligibility, that’s kind of what everyone’s rosters are kind of looking like now as far as guys being older, but this is definitely the first time that we’ve ever had 10 seniors on our roster. That’s for sure.”
Pearl also added that the team’s experience is part of the reason why Auburn scheduled one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the country.
“We felt like, to your point, the only team that would be able to handle this type of grind in addition to playing in probably the greatest conference in the history of college basketball would be a team with this many seniors and this many guys who played for this long,” Pearl said.
Auburn’s next game is a home matchup with Ole Miss Wednesday night. Tipoff is scheduled for 6 p.m. and it will be televised on ESPN2.
Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at prauterkus@al.com