Dual-Threat Rigby

Nothing we can do except kick back and watch at this point. I know Broome is getting a mil easy, but I wonder what some of the other guys are getting for us to be so capped out. I know the rough estimate for power 5 starters has been around 200k as a floor, but Chaney Johnson? Denver Jones? 200k for them....I dunno. and then when you get to the bench guys, I guess Dylan may make some good bread due to the basically unlimited public appearances he makes for the university and all the content he provides for social media. I've seen CMo around and I'm sure he gets at least 6 digits but...does he need to? I dunno, we may just be cooked lol (in terms of building a 10 man championship contending rotation). I listened to the CBS CBB podcast and they say coaches have now adjusted from looking for 13 real players to 11, but we're looking at 8? Does CMo count as a real player? We also don't have a walkon worth giving minutes to, unlike the last couple years. I think bare minimum we'll need to wait until the CFB regime can get guys without having to overpay to compensate for being a losing product. Hopefully they start winning some games so they can show (proof of concept) and that money can get rebalanced.

May be time to adjust expectations accordingly my guy Still a top 15-25 roster

Think this brings you close to Dior

I think Pearl is desperate for a real backup PG option and I don’t generally think he’s someone who cares a bit less than the average CBB coach about the moral part of the game. Some people may crucify me for that but just from what I’ve gathered following his Auburn tenure and some of the pre-Auburn stuff, I think he has a bit more edge to him, his staff and his processes. Which by the way, probably what you need to win. Saints don’t have championships in this sport; Self, Calipari, Pitino, they do. Oats went up against a juggernaut or he may have one. THOSE dudes get rings. But…there’s always a too far, and Dior Johnson is too far

My post got lost accidentally refreshing so simply put, I agree. Don’t know anything about Ivey-Curry but he profiles more as a guy willing to just be a backup and complementary. Who knows how Dior profiles for a real team, but superstar talent that got whatever looks he wanted for a juco? That has a higher chance of leading to some discontent, personality wise. I’d just want someone safer and less domestic abuse-y

What research? You can do the same research about the case right now with Google as they could

Dudes hated me for saying it but I don’t know if Freeze was really hireable for anyone other than us. No one seemed interested and we seemed to bid against ourselves there. All that being said, that was probably a 7-8 in terms of the “this move feels really nasty” scale I think Dior would be about a 10? He got plea bargained down from a felony, which is probably the only reason he can even be playing this sport right now. Dudes can say what they want about how bad the Miller thing was and how shameful it was he didn’t sit, but they at least recruited a guy who was initially completely spotless. We’d be taking this dude in…knowing EXACTLY what he did

Dior Johnson…wow

That’s if you’re living in an illusion, then yes the collective operates completely independent of any school-sponsored parties and yes, “fairness” (your definition of fairness still doesn’t make sense by the principles of capitalism or a free market economy) exists. Im sure the donors that intend on supporting the money making programs would find it very fair that they’re donating to others unrelated to their interests…

Why would more money go to athletes who generate less? Those players from our team that deserve more will find it at a program that can pay it (or they’ll realize they are below free market value and will learn to ask for less). Broome is the face of the most successful sport Auburn has; even if basketball wasn’t two of Auburn’s money sports (which would of course receive more funding than others), why would he not receive more money if he’s worth more to the fans, university, anything in between? I don’t want to throw the S-word out, as I’m sure it’s taboo on here, but US of America hasn’t abided by the economic principles you’re suggesting in any other industry, so I’m confused why it suddenly would for NIL

Yeah but you don’t approach NIL from a logical basis, you look at it more from a personal feelings manner. Basketball generated 19.2m in revenue and 4.2 in profit. From what I could tell looking at the preview for Opelika-Auburn’s operating budget article, baseball generated 1.8 in revenue. Again, it’s facts vs feelings - Auburn has a top of the line baseball and basketball program and one is generating many, many multitudes more in revenue than the other. This is just personal opinion, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Broome generated almost as much revenue as their entire team.

Keep in mind that million dollar figure has been thrown around for a TON of basketball players of that caliber, at bare minimum. If you look into this whatsoever, you’ll find a ton of other figures who’d back Matt Norlander’s price point. Auburn didn’t get Johni Broome to return for less than market value, and market value for a center of his caliber has been a million bare minimum.

Reasoning? You think he came back for free?

I can understand and appreciate the point about systems mattering here. But it also matters to have optionality and styles. Bama may not end up going 12 deep as they could (not many teams would). But they can go 7-9 and still have other options. They're less susceptible to deal with injury issues and in theory, they won't have to rely on guys who aren't participating because of optionality. I also think the same could be flipped; Pearl has shown to want to play 10 guys, but he may not get to 10 capable players. What then? We saw in the Samford game when his rotations were thrown off, they never really had a great feel for making up the Chad minutes. They couldn't run that full court defense nearly as well. Guys looked multiple steps slower in the back half than they have for most of the season. I also think to something like 2019 where they didn't have quality guard depth, and that was a very rough SEC grind at times, with them still trying to throw Tyrell Jones and even Cook (a former walk on) to man the point. Pearl was GOING to try to manifest another PG body that just wasn't there. If Pettiford starts out slow or never really lives up to his potential, then what? That's what optionality does for you. If I factor in systems, Pearl: A. needs to have great guards to go anywhere in March and B. needs a really quality backup guard to go anywhere in March. He has one backup guard option and it's a true freshman. That guy HAS to be ready to go day 1 or Auburn has to land a guy of that caliber before the season starts. Would that not be a point docked? I also would generally trust Oats to get more out of guards and wings than I would from Pearl, especially freshmen. More so because Auburn's lack of success there than anything. I don't think you mentioned that - Aden was disappointing, Tre was up and down his first year, and Tyrell Jones stunk overall (no offense to him). He missed on the Westry evaluation. That's one HS PG recruit (Cooper, for about 10 games) that played on a truly rotation level in the last 5 years. I'm fine if people want to trust that Pettiford is the one that breaks the trend, but I'd like to actually see it first.

Well I explain the jump part with the Chad vs Grant example in the previous post. You got one guy who played much, much higher than expectations and in just looking at the stats, the type of shots he generated, there's not much space for him to take a big jump. For him to take a big jump from there, he'd effectively be the best wing player offensively in the league lol. Grant didn't play up to the potential they expected and certainly not what he showed to close the season out for the majority of the season. That was the frustrations Bama had with him. Simply put, CBM played closer to what a reasonable ceiling would be for him, very often. Grant didn't. But what he did show during the closing stretch of the season, that would be the best player between either guy. I also don't know what jump those other guys you listed are supposed to take. Broome took the jump this past year. He shot like 35% from 3, was an All American, metrically graded out as a NPOY contender, etc. No offense, but I don't think you're considering floor vs ceiling here. Auburn ended up with a lot of high floor guys by the end of the season. Dudes who were primarily safe in their role and usually pretty consistent. They failed because they had a gaping hole in the point guard spot. But realistically, many of their guys shouldn't get much better. Again you didn't ask the question which I would if I were debating myself, but Mark Sears - I don't have him getting much better if at all. Because he played up to his ceiling. Denver would have to show me something more to believe in. The dude sucks at finishing at the rim and it pisses me off lol. I don't know how a 3rd year player that averaged 20 points is just bad at semi-uncontested layups, but he is. What more can Denver be if he can't lay the ball up? He gave you a great 3 ball, great defense, a good feel for getting to his spots and that's a great complementary player. That type of guy rarely becomes more than a complementary player in his 4th year of CBB. What big jump do you see him having? If we go down the roster of returnees, who's taking the leap? Is 45 year old Dylan Cardwell doing that, or C-Mo, or Addarin? The value of Auburn's core is that they have a high floor and a bunch of guys that have already largely achieved their potential; as you mentioned that's a pro, but you can't acknowledge it and then also get rubbed the wrong way when I suggest Bama, who you've also acknowledged has a ton of potential, would have more room to make a leap. I also don't expect they'll gel automatically, but when you have the offensive pedigree Oats does, plus you have two of your guards returning (Sears + Wrightsell) and your possible breakout player (Grant), they already have a solid foundation to build off of. You're making it seem like they are building from zero. Not to mention, a large part of the offense revolved around Sears and his gravity. That also greatly reduces the adjustments needed.

The thing with the Georgia logic is that was the worst Georgia team in 3 years. I actually think that was Ladd McConkey's first game of the entire season. Auburn obv has much more space to improve, but that wasn't the dynastic version of UGA 21-22. And I don't give grace to the Bulldogs if I can help it lol. Once you factor that, the usual way things go in Athens and Kirby likely being more pissed about that game than any other one (other than the Bama L), I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to snuff us out. That being said, if Thorne can actually throw on an elite defense, it's prob hard to see where an ass kicking of that magnitude occurs. There's ZERO chance Kirby allows that running gameplan from last year to fly again, so he's gonna have to air the ball out.

Per the CBS CBB pod, Ark has Jonas Aidoo, Johnell Davis and Adou Thierro receiving a million plus in NIL. Two of those dudes are complementary bigs. Broome definitely has to be eating good.

That post is 4 paragraphs long and it was still hard to get to everything presented in the post I quoted lol Like I said, our starting 5 is probably better than theirs if you go position by position, but I think it's also fair to mention that there's some positions that should be weighed differently than others. Again, in the modern game of basketball, the most important position is the PG one. They had a guy who was prob the best at that in the nation as the season ended (either him or Kolek IMO). The 5 position matters alot more to us than it does to them. Even if Cliff is just a defensive guy, he's an acclaimed defensive guy that would be matching up against the greatest strength Auburn has. Broome is also a guy that had a noticeable dip in production once he got to playing guys with a physique advantage (that weren't just slow plodding fat guys). They don't need Cliff to be Broome level offensively, the same way they were doing fine in the NCAA with Pringle just being a high energy, lob threat. For me, they have the best guy between either teams because an elite PG is better than a non-Edey level elite center. If you aren't of the Luka Garza, Keegan Murray, Edey level where you're a big that's an entire offensive hub, a PG brings more value (esp one with the ability to steady a ship in tight moments like Sears did). There's at least 2 losses that Bama would've had in the NCAAT if they had a guy even marginally worse as a floor general than him, and Broome, as with most centers on the college level, can't do that. Past that, the guy that I would think that'd be predicted to be the 3rd best player between either team would be Grant. Their offense was basically unstoppable in the tourney when he got going offensively, and that was with teams getting to sag off. The reason why you'd put him this high is because all he really needs to do is be what he showed at the end of the year more often. Not even thinking about it from a potential perspective where if he becomes a 34% 3 point shooter instead of a 27% guy, he's basically unguardable for 99% of bigs. CBM would be fourth to me bc while he may have been better last year as a whole, the version of Grant we saw at the end would be a better player and from what I saw out of Chad, I just think he's closer to what his absolute best case scenario would be. He was a 42% from 3 guy, 88% from the stripe, was asking to play point forward for a few months, made a ton of ridiculously hard shots, etc. I don't think there's much more room to grow for him (which Auburn should be fine with what they get out of him if he was just who he was as a full time starter).

Alright so I'll just break this down to different points you're presenting 1. Point: I'm giving an unfair POV about potential for Alabama's HS guys as compared to Auburn's - Response: Here's a piece from the post you quoted: "unless you think Pettiford and Howard are so talented that they essentially can make up for Bama doubling up on quality backups". We have two HS guys. They have 4, not incl Aden. They have the highest rated HS recruit out of the 4 and all 4 are higher than Howard (per On3). So not only do they have the numbers game, you would think they'd produce more contributors right away with their guys being better (than at least Howard). The earlier post of mine is saying that unless you think Howard and Pettiford can be at least as impactful as two of their incoming guys combined, there's no real way that Auburn's HS guys can be better. Numbers wise, it's virtually impossible as we'd need both of our guys to hit and they'd need at least 2 of their guys to not. 2. Proven production with the bench - Response: We don't have a bench yet. Like the buck could honestly stop there if we were being honest. But Addarin Scott, Chris Moore and Dylan Cardwell is a not very good bench. Your proven production is a Juco center, Chris Moore who couldn't get minutes over Lior Berman, and Dylan who's effectively been the same player 3 straight years. Let's say Wrightsell remains on the bench for whatever reason (him and Rylan switched spots with each other iirc, so he'd logically start but just doing a mental exercise here). That guy may be able to get pretty close to approximating our returning bench production. How many non-Auburn fans would take those three over Wrightsell and Aden? Or if it's Youngblood and Aden instead? This Mallette kid they got who we haven't mentioned is also a career 37.5% 3 point shooter and shot 42% from 3 last season. As of this moment, our bench doesn't win the potential or proven production argument 3. Last season. So I think you and I just look at the way a schedule goes somewhat differently. For you, if they lose a game they lost a game. The context of the loss doesn't seem to aid a team's projection (from what I can tell, I could be wrong). For me, losing to Clemson in a competitive game, losing to Purdue in Canada in a competitive game, losing to Creighton on the road by 3, that is a positive to me. You haven't asked it, but I would say that the Baylor loss did more for Auburn than beating down the rest of their pretty middling (at best) OOC in my eyes. I can't give them a pass for intending on scheduling hard teams but the hard teams ended up being bad. Auburn was metrically about equal while playing 4-5 less hard games, which probably would've been losses for us with how we played on the road and in neutral-sites against elite teams. That stuff just matters to me when doing projections. I honestly don't care much about the way the SEC went, just because that's the most comfortable a team is going to be. You're going to have opponents that have tape on you and know your tendencies, but the same works in the reverse. There are conferences that looked god awful in the regular season that excelled in single-elim moments, and that just says more to me about the quality of their in-game coaching and how quickly they can adjust. I think we're also at a point where some teams and even conferences are gaming the NET by beating the hell out of bad teams, so when they go up and play each other, it looks like you're 8-12 deep with metrically incredible teams. Wins mean more and losses mean less in that structure. In closing, I'd like to also mention that while we are comparing Auburn to Alabama, my original intention was to look at why Alabama would be considered a #1 for a neutral voter/fan, not necessarily why they'd be better than Auburn. That's one reason why us winning the season series against them last year hasn't really factored into any talking point of mine. It didn't mean much when they finished as a better team than us overall (which is the opinion I've seen from neutral rankings/voters)

By the way, I don’t want anyone looking at these posts thinking I’m down on Auburn. They DEFINITELY need to get the bench figured out to come close to last year, but the starting 5 is there to be amongst the top 2-5 in conference

I think it was one of his first couple years with that Tacko Fall team. Think they really got screwed out of a decent Cinderella run that year

I guess I am just of the mindset that you are a better team in March if you play those games. Like we played two hard games from November to SEC play, and one was a neutral site. I have to think that contributed to our lack of real road success and esp our unfamiliarity in the NCAAT structure, which is most like an OOC neutral/road. They played I believe 5, and one of them was against the team they played in the NCAAT, coincidentally. They also looked really good in the Purdue, Clemson and Creighton games, off of the top of my head. Those close losses matter when comparing your resume to other similar teams and their close losses (for example, ours was against App St lol). While I don’t think there was much of a difference between the teams last year, I do think Alabama had more to build off, by nature of their process that made them battle-tested for March. We REALLY need to up our OOC. Okay so Pegues/(someone) Denver/Pettiford CBM/Howard Chaney/someone Broome/Cardwell and CMO somewhere in the ether they have I don’t see how it’s close - unless you think Pettiford and Howard are so talented that they essentially can make up for Bama doubling up on quality backups (that are also highly touted recruits or players that have already played ball), there’s not really a way I can think of for making it close. Cardwell is solid, CMo is okay, Pettiford and Howard haven’t played games. That’s a bench that could be a lot of things, just like Bama, but Bama has way more viable options.

I think there’s some great points. Like I mentioned in a diff post, they had some rough stretches, but they played one of the hardest schedules in the whole nation and the SOR (which did a lot of heavy lifting for them early) is important in evaluating them. We were supposed to be a 3 seed, and they had the same record we did. Tenn was supposed to be a #1 if a ball bounced a bit differently and they were one win away from tying them in conference record. It was a year where most great but not elite teams got their butts kicked on the road against other teams; I can’t hold that against them specifically. I also don’t think that stretch should hold more weight than them playing great-elite teams to the wire in the OOC part of the year or them looking like a really good team in the tournament play. They got much better stretches of good than bad. Nelson looked stellar in tourney play where it mattered, and that’s the last thing he showed us. Typically, people get the benefit of the doubt and get expectations based around the last thing they showed us, so I’m giving him that. Btw Broome won the matchup, but at least in their home game, Nelson had our centers switched out on the perimeter and took advantage of that matchup to close out the game repeatedly. That’s even more relevant because apparently, Auburn intends on running those two centers together and one of them are going to have to defend him on the perimeter even more. I’d take their lineup just because it’s more proven. They have the best player between either lineup in Sears. That’s nothing to do with Bama-Auburn, but if you have a guy who’s arguably the best PG in CBB as he looked like in tourney play, that’s going to be more valuable than basically any caliber of center other than an Edey type guy. The game of basketball is just a perimeter oriented one at this point. So you have their proven PG against our guy that still has to show it on the “Power 6” level. The same applies to Denver and Youngblood in the reverse. CBM should be better than their 3 options atm. Grant is much, much better than our 4s. And Broome is better than Cliff. Their bench should blow ours completely out the water, which is the big difference imo. I don’t even think those two units should be in the same realm tbh. I’d be happy to be wrong but they look to be what, 6 deep with high level guys? Their 12th man is what, Aden?

True - I just wanted to mention that both programs had things going for them. It's not like we'd be losing the guy to total zeroes, yknow

Im guessing Sears returned? I’d have them #1 in that case, but it’s pretty much neck and neck with KU. I’m basically rewarding the F4 exp, Grant possibly taking another step, and the POTENTIAL of the class they brought in. If those guys play to their potential, they can have one of the best benches the SEC has seen recently. KU’s returning value almost doesn’t even matter to me with how underwhelming those dudes performed last year, but Harris, Adams and Dickinson were the strengths so I’ll give them that. I like their class more than Bama’s. It’s more proven production. Probably a lower potential ceiling. Those two would be my #1 contenders