AUBURN | I’m not sure rebuilding is an adequate enough word for the current state of Auburn’s basketball program.
It’s more like slash and burn for a team that is fresh off its second Final Four berth in the last six years.
It’s possible, depending on Tahaad Pettiford’s decision to enter the NBA Draft or return for his sophomore season, that the Tigers won’t return a single scholarship player from last year’s SEC regular season champions.
Yet somehow, even with all the uncertainty, it’s pretty exciting to see all the talented players that are being added to the roster and trying to figure out exactly how they’ll fit in and what their role will be.
It would probably feel a lot different at another school going through this much turnover without the evaluation and recruiting chops of Bruce Pearl and his hard-working staff along with a nice NIL budget.
But that’s not Auburn’s problem. Not at all.
Auburn looks like it’s bringing in one of the nation’s best group of newcomers. So far, that includes three true freshmen, two junior college players, three D-I transfers and one D-II transfer.
Of the nine newcomers, seven have multiple years of eligibility remaining, which was a key part of last season’s team putting together the best-ever season in school history.
Johni Broome (three years), Denver Jones (two years), Chad Baker-Mazara (two years) and Chaney Johnson (two years) were all former transfers that took big steps forward in their development during their time at Auburn.
That extra time certainly helped them build more chemistry together and arguably overachieve for a group playing mainly a seven-man rotation without any high-level NBA prospects.
The Tigers’ talented staff deserves a lot of credit for their development and team building as does the hard work the players put in throughout their time at Auburn.
This new group will begin that process in just a couple of months.
I expect there will be one or two more additions before the roster is set and the coaching staff begins preparing them for another push for an SEC title and postseason run.
And with the players they’ve added so far, Auburn can be right in the thick of it again. Sure, there’s a long way to go but it appears they’re building a roster with more depth and more versatility from a year ago.
Pearl is going to love the length of this team on the perimeter and what it allows him to do defensively. Of course, these players will have to make a lot of sacrifices in the offseason to learn to play defense the way Pearl demands.
It also looks like a team that will be much more dangerous in transition and not so tied to a half-court offense.
To think that Auburn could replace all or most of its best-ever team and still compete for a championship would have been unfathomable in any other era of its 120-year history.
But this is the era of Bruce Pearl, the transfer portal and NIL. Those three factors along with a motivated group of boosters and fans have Auburn well on its way to being at the center of the college basketball universe once again next season.
*** Monday musings is brought to you by Uncle Keith’s Red Sauce. I was a customer before bringing them on as a sponsor and I was hooked after the very first taste. It’s available in original and hot and can be found in Publix throughout the state of Alabama along with select Piggly Wiggly’s, Renfroe’s, the Kroger’s in Auburn/Opelika and on-line. Uncle Keith’s Red Sauce was born right here in the state of Alabama. ***
*** GET 15% OFF YOUR ON-LINE ORDER WITH THE DISCOUNT CODE: BMATT15 ***
In today’s musical journey, we go back 21 years to the day a future Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner got voted off and finished seventh on a U.S singing competition T.V. show. On April 21, 2004, Jennifer Hudson was eliminated from the third season of American Idol after performing Barry Manilow’s “Weekend of New England.” Judge Simon Cowell, who had been critical of Hudson and her outfits on several occasions, blamed a poor song choice during Barry Manilow week. But a group of on-line trolls known as Vote for the Worst may have had the biggest impact on the surprising finish. Hudson was the top vote getter a couple of weeks earlier when she sang Elton John’s “Circle of Life.” Sir Elton came to her defense after she was eliminated and two other African Americans joined her in the bottom three, calling it “incredibly racist.” Cowell and Hudson didn’t speak again until 2022 when he was the first guest on The Jennifer Hudson Show where he apologized and they had a reconciliation. Fantasia Barrino won season three of American Idol. Barrino’s debut single, 2004’s “I Believe,” spent a week atop the Billboard 100 and she won a Grammy for her 2010 single, “Bittersweet.”
Jennifer Kate Hudson was born in Chicago, Ill., in 1981 and raised by her mother, Darnell. She started singing in church choir and community theatre at age 7. She graduated from Dunbar Vocational High School in 1999 and after a short time in college, began singing on the Disney Wonder ship as one of Muses from Hercules. About a year after American Idol, Hudson beat out more than 100 other singers and actors for the role of Effie White in film adaptation of Dreamgirls, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She released her self-titled debut album in 2008, which included her biggest hit on the Billboard 100 in “Spotlight.” The album won Hudson her first Grammy Award for best Female R&B Album. It was following the release of her first album that Hudson suffered a family tragedy when her mother, brother and 7-year old nephew were murdered by her sister’s estranged husband, William Balfour, who received three life sentences plus 120 years. Hudson has released four albums, appeared in more than 40 films and T.V. shows, and starred in three Broadway shows and co-produced another. She won a second Grammy in 2017 for the Best Musical Theatre Album from The Color Purple musical, a Daytime Emmy Award in 2021 for being an executive producer of Baba Yaga and a Tony Award in 2022 as a producer for the Broadway musical, A Strange Loop. Hudson is one of 17 people to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards (EGOT).
