Per Mark Murphy of TOOS:
AUBURN, Alabama--After taking a four-day break for Thanksgiving following a road trip to Brooklyn, the Auburn basketball Tigers are preparing for their first home game since Nov. 18th with Furman coming to Auburn Arena for an 8 p.m. CST contest on Thursday.
“We practiced Sunday night and got the turkey out of us a little bit and on Monday we worked real hard on Furman,” Coach
Bruce Pearl said. “They are a team that won 25 games last year and they were ranked as a top five mid-major team in the preseason and they have everybody back from a year ago.”
Auburn is 7-0 and moved up four spots this week in both the coaches and AP Top 25 polls after defeating New Mexico and Richmond to win the Legends Classic tournament. The Tigers are No. 13 in the coaches poll and one spot behind that in the AP ranking.
Pearl declared that his team continues to be a work in progress as it prepares to play its first home game since Nov. 18th.
“For us, we have to continue to develop our depth,” he said. “We have to get our seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th guys to the point where we don’t drop off as much going to the bench. We are still focused on us.”
Despite being focused inwards, the coach emphasized the Tigers are taking this week’s opponent very seriously. “Furman is one of those teams a lot people don’t want to schedule,” he said of the 8-2 Paladins. “It is a good team that runs good stuff so we are going to have to be sharp.
“They will understand what our (defensive) coverages are and will do a good job of adjusting to that so we will have to adjust during the course of the game,” Pearl pointed out. “Furman is shooting the three-ball well. They are 6-7 across the front line so they have pretty good size with good bounce.”
Auburn features four players averaging in double figures for scoring led by senior guard
Samir Doughty’s 19.3 points per contest. Doughty is third on the team in rebounding at 4.9 per outing.
Freshman forward Isaac Okoro (23) has been a key player for the Tigers. (Photo: Adam Sparks / Inside the Auburn Tigers, 247Sports)
Freshman forward
Isaac Okoro is averaging 13.1 points and 4.3 rebounds. Senior forward
Danjel Purifoy is next with 11 points and five rebounds per game followed by senior center
Austin Wiley at 10.7 points. Wiley, the current SEC Player of the Week, is averaging a team-best 8.6 rebounds per game.
10COMMENTS
The Furman at Auburn contest will be televised on the SEC Network.