Auburn Tigers

Virginia returns to the Final Four for the first time since Olden Polynice roamed the UHall paint in 1984. Awaiting them is an Auburn Tigers program making their first ever Final Four appearance. Final Fours are strange beasts, where the hoopla will be unlike anything the Hoos or Tigers have ever seen before, and evaluating this game like it’s a standard matchup is tenuous at best. What will it take for Virginia to succeed under the brightest of lights against perhaps the most red-hot opponent it’s seen all year?

Game Details:

Date/Time: Saturday, April 6th, 6:09 pm ET
Location: US Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN
TV: CBS

 

What ‘They’ Say

Vegas: Virginia -5.5, O/U 130.5, equates to ~68-62 UVA win
TAPE: Ranks Auburn #14, predicts a 69-62 UVA win, 70% confidence
KenPom: Ranks Auburn #11, predicts a 70-64 UVA win, 70% confidence

 

Depth Chart:

Starters
PG #1 Jared Harper, 5-11 175, JR
33 mpg, 15.4 ppg, 5.8 apg, 37% 3P%
SG #2 Bryce Brown, 6-3 198, SR
32 mpg, 16 ppg, 1.9 apg, 41% 3P%
SF #24 Anfernee McLemore, 6-7 220, JR
19 mpg, 6.6 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 45% FG%
PF #4 Malik Dunbar, 6-6 230, SR
18 mpg, 6.8 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 44% FG%
C #0 Horace Spencer, 6-8 225, SR
16 mpg, 4.3 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 46% FG%
Key Reserves
PG #12 J’Von McCormick, 6-0 175, JR
12 mpg, 4.1 ppg, 1.3 apg, 53% 3P%
SG #10 Samir Doughty, 6-4 195, JR
24 mpg, 7.2 ppg, 1.7 apg, 43% 3P%
F #3 Danjel Purifoy, 6-7 230, JR
12 mpg, 3 ppg, 2 rpg, 42% FG%
C #50 Austin Wiley, 6-11 260, JR
13 mpg, 7.1 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 57% FG%

 

The ABC’s of Auburn:

A) This is the best guard tandem we’ve faced this year. Harper and Brown are one hell of a 1-2 punch in the back court. The veteran pair, a senior and a junior, headlined the all-SEC 2nd team this year and have been carrying Auburn through the tournament, averaging 17.5 and 18.3 ppg respectively in the NCAAT. Harper is chipping in an additional 6.5 apg over that span, including 11 against UNC. Brown has been a knock-down 3-point shooter in the tournament, going 15-of-32 (47%) over the last 4 games, headlined by a 7-of-11 performance against Kansas, though he can be effective going to the rim as well. Both players are multi-dimensional threats, inside-and-out, who will provide a still challenge for the Pack Line to contain without giving up too much on the rest of the Tigers.

B) They have no true underclassmen in their rotation. This is a deep and veteran 9-man rotation, everyone in at least their 3rd year playing college ball. Spencer, Purifoy, and Brown were part of Pearl’s first full recruiting class at Auburn in 2015. The next class brought in Wiley, Harper, and McLemore. Wiley did miss his sophomore season for NCAA violations and Purifoy missed both his first and third years in the program under his own NCAA clouds (this is a Bruce Pearl program we’re talking about, after all).

In addition to the core six homegrown veterans, Pearl also has senior forward Malik Dunbar whom he brought in as a 2-year Junior College transfer, redshirt junior Samir Doughty fresh off his transfer redshirt from VCU, and junior college transfer sparkplug guard McCormick.

There’s no youth or inexperience for the Hoos to exploit here. Most of these guys have been playing for Pearl and with each other for years now.

C) Their post play is a big question mark. The Tigers’ makeup changed drastically late in their win over UNC when star big man, 6’8″ 230 lb sophomore Chuma Okeke, a former Top 50 recruit, tore his ACL. It was the worst part of an otherwise phenomenal weekend of games, seeing a great player end his season via injury.

Auburn is not a tall team. Not that they’re a small team. But other than backup center Austin Wiley at 6’11”, no one on the team stands bigger than 6’8″. Okeke was incredible as a 6’8″ center, undersized yet powerful, skilled, natural. He got it done at both ends, scoring 12 points a game from both inside (58% on 2PAs) and outside (39% from 3, including 5-of-9 against UNC), grabbing 3 offensive and 4 defensive boards nightly, blocking shots (1.2 blkpg), and even creating turnovers (team-leading 1.8 stlpg).

Horace Spencer was inserted into the starting lineup against Kentucky but gave only 13 minutes while committing 5 fouls. Alongside him, undersized PF Dunbar committed 4 fouls in his 13 minutes. The two combined for just 1 point. Austin Wiley is talented off the bench but inconsistent and has been hampered by injuries this year, hence why he only plays 13 minutes a night (14 against UK). Auburn may choose to go small, with the 6’4″ Samir Doughty at the 3 and 6’7″ Purifoy in the post.

This all makes it hard to project their paint performance in this game. Auburn already struggled in key post-related statistics. They were 12th in the SEC in offensive rebounding, and 10th in defensive rebounding. They were only 11th in 2-point scoring and 14th in 2-point defense. They fouled drivers way too frequently. About the only place they could hang their hat in the paint was in their block rate (4th in the SEC), but without Okeke, what do they look like inside? Kentucky was able to secure a slight rebounding advantage over Auburn in the Elite 8 and convert inside at a 55% clip while drawing 21 FTAs; the Cats were done in moreso by their 14 TOs (7 by PG Ashton Hagans) and their 5-of-21 3-point shooting (Hagans, Herro, and Quickley combining to go 3 of 15). Will Virginia look to similarly attack the rim?

 

Their Season To Date

Auburn is 30-9 on the season. They went 11-2 in their nonconference, with one good win over Washington at home and two losses to ACC teams in Duke (neutral by 6) and NC State (road by 7). They went 11-7 in SEC regular season play, where their worst losses were to South Carolina and Ole Miss. After a February 23rd loss at Kentucky, they caught fire, and are currently on a 12-game winning streak. They closed the regular season with a home win over Tennessee, won the SEC Tournament by beating UF and Tennessee again, and then won the Midwest region by plowing through a trio of blue bloods: 4-seed Kansas by 14, 1-seed UNC by 17, and 2-seed Kentucky by 6 in OT.

 

Keys to getting the win:

1) Ball security. Auburn, by their full-season statistics, is a good-but-not-quite-great defensive club, ranking 39th nationally in AdjD per KenPom, 6th in the 14-team SEC. But they do stand-out in one critical area, and that’s forcing turnovers. Opponents in the NCAAT are coughing it up 15 times a game, 60% of those in live-ball situations. In the S16 and E8, Auburn held a 33-14 advantage in points off turnovers. This has been going on all year, as the Tigers finished the year ranked 1st in the nation in both turnover rate and steal rate. Opponents commit a turnover on a full 1 out of every 4 possessions; over half those times it’s a live ball steal. No one in America ball-hawks better than the Tigers.

Virginia, by contrast, is of course one of the nation’s best at playing clean, relatively turnover-free offense. Since an awful first half against G-W, they’ve played mostly mistake-free in the NCAAT, opponents picking up a paltry 3.5 steals a game. But this will be the stiffest test yet for the Hoos’ backcourt. Duke, another defense with elite turnover bonafides, grabbed 12 steals against us in the JPJ win, and other ball-hawking ACC defenses like VT, Syracuse, and FSU snagged 9 steals apiece in our contests, so the Hoos are occasionally susceptible. Virginia will need to take immaculate care of the ball in this game to get the win. Once teams get past the Tigers’ pressure, their shot defense is fairly pedestrian, ranking bottom-half nationally in both 2P% and 3P% allowed; it’s just getting that shot off in the first place that’s beyond difficult.

2) Win the paint. Virginia comes into this game as the bigger, more paint-oriented team, and that was before the loss of Okeke. On the glass UVA’s steady defensive rebounding presence (opponents averaging only 5 O-Reb’s a game during the NCAAT) ought to hold serve against the Tigers (averaging under 8 ORpg in the tourney, though they did manage 10 O-Reb’s against UK without Okeke). And UVA’s big men, including wing-forwards Key and Hunter, ought to enable UVA’s above-average offensive rebounding game (8 OR’s a game during the year, up to 11 in the NCAAT) to generate second chances against an Auburn defensive rebounding unit that ranks 333rd nationally.

Virginia should also make a point to get to the rim with both its big men and its wings. The Tigers had trouble defending the paint before losing their starting center, blocking shots but committing fouls as well, and good aggression and crisp actions should generate high percentage looks at the rim. Kentucky’s bigs PJ Washington and Reid Travis went a combined 12 of 19 from 2 in the Elite 8, and Mamadi, Hunter, Salt, Key, and Huff should similarly be able to score effectively against an Auburn rotation with only two rotation players bigger than 6’7″. This goes double if the Tigers’ guards press out to the perimeter to ball-hawk, opening up the paint for more action.

3) Rediscover our perimeter defense. 27%: that was UVA’s team 3P% defense coming into the NCAA Tournament, leading the nation. 39%: that’s what UVA’s four opponents have shot from behind the arc during tournament play. Maybe it’s something we’re doing defensively, maybe it’s opposing guards just getting a bit of March fever and dialing in on a hot streak (which certainly applied to Carsen Edwards). But either way, it’s a troubling trend, and one that’s highlighted vs Auburn.

The Tigers have a team 3P% of 38% that currently ranks as the 15th best mark in the country. They finished second in the SEC. In NCAAT play that percentage has jumped to 40.4% as they bombed both Kansas and UNC into submission. Kentucky was able to hold them to 31% (7 of 23), but Auburn is going to look to its 3-point shot to win the day for their offense, especially if UVA doesn’t let them get many transition opportunities (see Key #1). The Tigers take almost half of their shots from behind the 3-point arc (49.5%, 8th highest rate in the country), and they’ve played that way in the postseason too (48.5% 3PA/FGA ratio in the NCAAT), so Virginia will need to ensure the sharp-shooting Tigers aren’t repeatedly getting room-and-rhythm attempts from range.

 

 

Predictions:

I have one bonus key, at that’s don’t be too happy just to be there. One Shining Podcast touched on that to some degree this week, in that because UVA had such a unique monkey on its back re: March Madness, the last 5 years of early/ugly flameouts punctuated by the 16-seed upset, that the Hoos had far more emotion involved in Saturday’s net-cutting than Auburn/MSU/TT had in theirs. As a program, and as a fan base, there was just so much additional pent-up energy to be released when that buzzer sounded, that the Hoos have to find a way to not just refocus on Auburn this week, but to recapture the hunger and drive that propelled them through Columbia and Louisville.

This also applies to finding a way through the other weird facets of being in the Final Four… the media circus, the multitude of scouts, and of course playing basketball in a football stadium with weird sightlines and lighting.

Auburn is red hot. They didn’t get here by getting some lucky, soft draw. Over the last four weeks they’ve beaten Kentucky (KP #8), UNC (KP #7), Kansas (KP #17), and Tennessee twice (KP #10). Virginia’s “edge” of having played in the ACC gauntlet (something we talked about vs Oregon last week) does not apply here. Auburn has seen and conquered a schedule every bit as daunting as ours, maybe more so, and certainly more recently.

I’ve been thinking a lot about a comp for Auburn, and the closest point of reference I can come up with is that they’re Virginia Tech-like. They’re both smaller lineups that play with a lot of intensity defensively and like to create turnovers, put strong small forwards and combo forwards on the wings who can play inside or out, love the 3-ball, and have an established roster with their coach’s identity. Maybe Auburn is who VT could’ve been if they’d had Chris Clarke and/or Landers Nolley available to add more depth at the forward spots. Okeke is smaller than Blackshear, but they served a similar role in providing interior toughness, inside/out scoring, and rebounding that balanced the rest of the perimeter. So yeah, a full-strength Auburn is what a topped-out full-strength VT could’ve been.

But that’s with Okeke, who was the MVP of their win over UNC prior to his awful injury (again, I can’t stress enough how much I hate this for him; truly wish we were playing this game with both teams at full strength). All the credit in the world to Auburn for beating a top UK team without him, battling them hard on the glass and in the paint despite the size disadvantage. But it’s hard to take too much from a conference game in the Elite 8, as we learned ourselves 3 years ago; they’re wonky affairs when the coaches and players come in with so much history and institutional knowledge.

Auburn is a very, very good team with an elite back court, veterans all over the floor, and a great X’s-and-O’s guy at the helm. UVA has lost to worse. But we’ve also played and beaten better. It all comes down to how locked-in, how fiery UVA plays from the opening tip. That bonus key, being every bit as hungry as the Tigers, wanting that Monday title shot even more than they wanted to win the Final Four berth in the first place.

Play hard, play clean, and UVA will justify being the favorite in this one. The guard play may be a wash, Brown and Harper are to the SEC what Jerome and Guy were to the ACC, a backcourt tandem no opponent wanted to see. But Virginia should have the advantage in the paint, and if we can be better on the glass and at the rim while not giving up too much in the open floor, Virginia will advance to play for it all.

Hoos Win 70-63